


Timeline 11

by knowledgekid



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Alice can be a total bitch, Best Friends, Eliot has a Fear and Loathing at Brakebills box, F/M, M/M, Multi, cryokinesis can go very wrong, gratuitous use of Bowie lyrics, gratuitous use of Wilco lyrics, knowledge kids, lots of spells, oh yeah I also threw in some Weezer, overuse of Adderall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 13:36:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 56,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19831324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knowledgekid/pseuds/knowledgekid
Summary: Stipulations:Kady never goes to BrakebillsQuentin and Julia are both Knowledge StudentsQuentin can't slip Fogg the truth serumQuentin and Julia dieBigby is not at Brakebills





	1. Chapter 1

Quentin can hardly remember a time without Julia. There’s preschool, of course, a haze of coloring and ABC songs, but on the very first day of kindergarten, he feels so small underneath his backpack, the school so big, the kids so large and loud. He finds the block corner, empty for now, and begins building. A dark-haired girl sits next to him. She doesn’t speak. He doesn’t speak. They build a castle together, still quiet, when finally he musters the courage to say, “I’m Quentin.” 

“I’m Julia,” she says. Her eyes are dark and enormous. “You looked lonely.” 

“Can our castle have knights in it? And a king and a queen?” 

“You be the king and I’ll be the queen.” 

He nods. This feels right. “We can be friends too.” He hesitates, scared he said too much. “If you want.” 

“We can be friends,” she says. “The other kids are loud and they can’t read. I can read.” 

“I can read too,” Quentin tells her. 

They play king and queen in their block castle all morning, until a boy calls Quentin a weenie for playing with a girl. Julia punches him in the face. She and Quentin hold hands all the way to the principal’s office, both of them crying. When their mothers pick them up, Quentin’s mom buys ice cream all around. Both Quentin and Julia get rainbow sprinkles. 

*****

And she is always there, after that. Always Quentin and Julia. Always together, always trying to beat each other for the best grades. Always sleeping over at each other’s houses, back-to-back under a makeshift tent, playing kings and queens, until their parents decide they’re too old for sleepovers. Always obsessing over Fillory, making maps on rainy days and planning their trips there, with Quentin as Martin and Julia as Jane. Always sulking, later, when one or the other decides to date. They get better about it as time goes on, learn to share. But they are still together: when they go through their Weezer phase, Quentin writes on the back of her notebook: she’s in your bones/ she is your marrow/ and your ride home. He ignores the rest of the song. It’s not important for them. 

When he feels the pull of depression, after his mom leaves, she pulls him back. When she starts the spiral into anorexia, he yanks her to safety. They have significant others. They lose their virginity, and immediately call each other to spill the news. They are debate partners, mathletes, partners in crime. They go to college together, both majoring in lit with Julia snagging a double in poli-sci. They take the same classes. They have the same friends, date in the same circles. When life gets hard, they crawl into each other’s beds and sleep back-to-back. Everyone’s convinced they’re secretly together. But they aren’t. They’re just Quentin and Jules. They have each other. They always will. 

********

Quentin and Julia stand on the stoop of the Brooklyn brownstone. Quentin knocks again. 

“Maybe he’s not home,” Julia whispers. “Maybe he forgot.” 

Quentin bangs again. No answer. He pushes the door gently, and it creaks open a smidge. 

“Quentin!” Julia cuffs him on the shoulder. 

“Oh look, it was open when we got here,” he says, and shoulders his way through the ornate stained-glass door. 

“Quentin! We’ll never get into Princeton if we break into the interviewer’s house!” Julia hisses. He ignores her. She gives an annoyed huff and follows him, like he knew she would. 

They stand in a richly appointed foyer, a room full of urns and vases and old paintings, the trappings of old money. “Hello?” Quentin calls. “HELLO?” 

“We’re, um, here for the interviews?” ventures Julia. 

No one answers. Quentin walks into a room off to the left and sucks in a breath. It’s a library, a rich man’s library, and it’s full of Fillory books. He’d known they’d chosen his interviewer based on their mutual love of Fillory, but this was far beyond what he’d expected: first editions, British editions, American editions, children’s editions and trippy 70s paperbacks. The room is dominated by an enormous grandfather clock, a clock ornately carved and curled out of old mahogany. It appears to be stopped. “Jules!” he calls hoarsely. “Jules! I think it’s —” 

“Quentin,” she says, and points at the desk. A man is slumped there. He appears not to be breathing. 

*****

An upbeat, strangely familiar paramedic wraps them both in gray shock blankets. They protest. “Nonsense,” she says. “These are shock blankets, and you’ve certainly had a shock.” 

Julia and Quentin hold hands under the blankets, mostly because there’s a dead body in the room. “I’m so sorry,” Quentin says. 

“Why, did you kill him?” she chirps. “Anyway, they’ll have to let you into Princeton now, won’t they?” 

“Uh, I guess so,” Julia says. 

“Well, no use sticking around here,” she says. “Off you go, now! And, Quentin — he left this here for you.” She hands him a manilla envelope. And there’s out on the freezing New York street, still wrapped in shock blankets, before they can so much as say goodbye. 

“Well, that was fucking weird,” Julia says. 

“Yeah,” Quentin agrees. “Definitely a movie and pizza night.” 

“Your place? I’ll go home and get Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal,” Julia says, naming their top two favorite childhood movies, the ones they watch when the world has slid sideways and they need cinematic comfort food. 

“See you in an hour,” Quentin says. They hug briefly, then set off in opposite directions. Quentin is dropping his shock blanket in a trash can when he remembers the manilla folder. He opens it. The Magicians, reads the handwritten manuscript. By Jane Chatwin. “What the fuck?!” he says, because everyone knows there are only five Fillory books and Jane Chatwin is a character by Christopher Plover, not an author herself. But as he flips to the second page, the first blows off and the wind whips it down an alley. He chases it, but it only blows further, and further, just out of reach. When he reaches the strange yellow sunshine, he drops the folder in awe. 

****

Q!” someone shouts. The voice is so familiar, so normal in this strange place, he whirls immediately. Julia is barreling towards him, dark hair flying, school bag bouncing, scarf askew. It’s all he can do to open his arms and catch her. “We made it!” she shouts joyfully. “We made it! We’re fucking magicians, Q! We’re fucking magicians!” 

People turn to look at them. Half of them smile. Half roll their eyes. Quentin doesn’t care. He can’t wipe the stupid-ass grin off his face as he picks up his best friend in the whole world and twirls her in a circle. He can’t believe he’s seeing her. It’s beyond his wildest hopes. The only thing better than magic school is magic school with Julia in it. “We fucking made it, Jules!” he shouts, and he crushes her to him, pounds her on the back like when they won the city-wide math contest or she made first chair in the youth orchestra or they both got into Princeton. “We did it! We did it!”

“Dorks,” some dude in a scarf mutters. 

“Speak for yourself, you Motley Crue looking motherfucker,” Julia shouts happily. “Because I am going to be a fucking magician.”

“So are all are of us. Duh,” the guy says. He looks bored. 

“If you’re this bored, you don’t deserve it,” Quentin says. “Because We. Are. Fucking. MAGIC!” He and Julia high-five. 

“Oh my God, I need a cigarette,” Jules says. She sits down on the concrete edging, takes a pack of Parliaments from her purse and lights one. She hands another to Quentin and he lights it off hers. They suck them down. “What did you do for your spell?” she asks. “I made all the lights in the room turn off.” 

“I started with card tricks? And then the Dean yelled at me to do some fucking magic and I freaked out and made the giant house of cards and a sword appeared. It was way crazy and way fucked and it was fucking magic, Jules! I did fucking magic! They called it “major arcana”, whatever that means.”

“Did you get your room assignment?” 

“Yeah. So glad we don’t have roommates like this is our freshman year of college or something.” 

“Yeah, that would be totally stupid.” 

“Are your parents sending a bag with your stuff?” 

“Yeah. My sister or the housekeeper will probably pack it so at least I know I’ll get all my makeup.” 

“My dad will just throw some hoodies in a suitcase. I wonder if I can like, get back to New York to get some jeans or something. I know he’ll forget shit.” 

“Your dad will totally forget to pack you like, underwear.” 

“No shit.” Quentin pauses. He has thrown his jacket off in the unseasonable sunshine, rolled up his shirtsleeves and loosened the tie Jules had picked out for his interview. “Guess what?”

“What?” she asks. 

“We’re fucking magicians!” he fairly squeals. They hug again. Quentin nearly sets Julia’s hair on fire. 

“Oh my god,” a girl in a short, flowered dress says as she strolls by on her way to get some dinner. “New babies.” 

“That’s the one I told you about,” says a lanky guy with curly hair. “The one who was late. The adorkable one.” 

She turns, purses her perfectly lipsticked mouth, narrows her Urban Decayed smokey eyes. “I like the floppy hair. I like the body. He’s hot and has no fucking clue. Just our type.” 

“And he’s clearly enthusiastic,” the boy says. They turn and continue down the sidewalk, into the maze. 

“Clearly,” the girl snorts. “Problematic: girlfriend?” 

“Nope,” the guy says. “Bestie. The body language is all wrong.”

“We might have a new challenge,” she says. 

“We might,” he agrees.

“What was his name?” she asks. 

“Quentin Coldwater,” the guy says. He flicks some curls off his high forehead. “Quentin Makepeace Coldwater.” 

******

At four am, Julia’s banging on Q’s very solid oak door. “Wake up, sleepy!” she shouts. 

He answers shirtless in a pair of well-worn plaid pajama pants she knows from late-night movie marathons. “What?” he grumps. “Jules, it’s the asscrack of dawn.” 

“I know,” she says. “But look!” She drops the hallway into total darkness and lights it up again. 

Quentin jumps. “Holy — what the fuck — warn me next time you do some shit like that! Where did you pick that up?” 

“The books we got. I practiced all night and added one spell to another. My fingers hurt like shit and I set a few small fires, but I figured out how to do it.” 

“Oh now that’s fucking cool,” Quentin says. “Get in here and teach it to me.” 

By six am, Quentin has mastered it. By eight am, they’ve also figured out how to make fireworks appear in the darkness. They’re amusing each other by laying on their backs on Quentin’s bed, spelling out obscenities in sparkling lights, when someone pounds on the door. 

“Will you two keep it the fuck down?!” the someone shouts. “Some of us have to sleep before class!”

“Wanna see some fireworks?” Julia calls. 

“No! I wanna see the insides of my fucking eyelids!” 

Quentin yanks open the door. It’s scarf boy. “Um, it’s like breakfast time,” he says. 

“Um, it’s like hangover o’clock, so why don’t you shut the fuck up and maybe go get some,” he snaps back. “And stop singing Taylor Swift in your head! God! What a fucking toolbox.” 

“You can read my mind?” Quentin gapes. The hardwoods feel cold under his feet. He wishes he had put some socks on. 

“Yeah, fuckstick, and I wish I couldn’t, so figure out some fucking wards, Swiftie! And put on some socks, pussy.” The guy stalks back to the next room and slams the door. 

“What a dickhole,” Julia giggles. 

“Dude, total toolbox,” Quentin imitates. They both fall into laughter. 

“Hey, Jules,” Quentin says suddenly. 

“Yeah?” 

“Do you remember that folder the paramedic handed me?” 

“Yeah, sure. What was in it? Did you even get a chance to look?” 

“I glanced at it. It was — god, you’ll never fucking believe this, and I can’t believe I’m just fucking remembering it — it was a handwritten manuscript. The Magicians. Written by Jane fucking Chatwin.” 

“No. Fucking. Way.” 

“Yes fucking way. I opened it and a page blew away and I chased it, and that’s how I ended up here. I think I dropped the folder. Jules, it’s gone.” 

“You mean you were holding the sixth Fillory book and you lost it?!” 

“Um, that’s exactly what I mean.” 

“Oh. My. Fucking. God.” 

They tear off to look for it. They go everywhere: the exam classrooms, the Lawn, the Maze. They walk the treeline. They bang through the trees. But there’s no envelope anywhere. At dark, they finally admit defeat.

“If it’s meant to be found it’ll be found,” Julia says. “Isn’t that how things work with Fillory?” 

“I guess,” Quentin says. “No, I mean, it is. It’ll come back if it’s meant to come back.” 

“Until then, we’re in magic school, bitch!”

They break into stupid grins again. Quentin doesn’t know if this will ever, ever, ever get old.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Quentin and Julia are practically sitting on the edge of their front-row wooden seats. The desks are old-fashioned, the kind you see in Ye Olde Schoolhouses, carved over with decades of graffiti from Brakebills students. Quentin’s says, “Life is hard/ Then you die/ So cast real hard/ And get real high.” He points it out to Jules. She smiles tightly. Normally it’s the type of thing that would send them laughing, but this is serious. First day of magic class in real magic school. They’ve eaten protein bars. They’ve worn lucky socks. They’ve carried the same satchels they’ve had since high school, Julia’s with the worn “Free Tibet” patch and Quentin’s the battered leather one he’d gotten for his sixteenth birthday. They are as ready as they’ll ever be.

Professor March steps to the front of the classroom. He begins babbling about magic, about what it is and isn’t and what it can do. Then he asks if anyone can demonstrate some. Julia raises her hand. 

“Miss Wicker, do you mind stepping up and showing the class?” he asks. 

“Um, it’s kind of more fun if we do it cooperatively?” she says. “Can Quentin help me?” 

The man sweeps his hand in front of him. “The floor is yours, Miss Wicker and Mr. Coldwater.” 

Julia and Quentin step to the front of the class. A sea of first-year students stares back at them, waiting. Quentin’s suddenly struck that they aren’t the only smart kids in the class. But damn it, they are the ones ready to have the most fun. “You ready?” Julia whispers. 

“Ready,” Quentin says. 

Julia drops the room into total darkness. People ooh and ahh. 

In the black, rainbow fireworks suddenly crackle out, “I AM A FUCKING MAGICIAN.” 

The class explodes into laughter and clapping. Julia brings the lights back up. 

“While I can’t condone your use of profanity, that was a lovely demonstration of Clasky’s Light Manipulation, I assume amplified by a McGruder charm and then decorated with a Rockette Special, am I right?” 

Jullia nods. “We wove in the Rockette Special to take off two seconds after the light dimmed so we didn’t have to cast two separate spells.” 

“Very good. Very good. Did you two come up with this on your own?” 

Julia and Quentin nod. “It took awhile for the metamath to work out,” Julia admits. 

“If I’m not mistaken, you two will end up as Knowledge students,” March says. “Anyone else have some magic to share with us? Miss Quinn?” 

Everyone swivels. From the back of the room, a girl who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else other than here stalks up to the front of the room. She’s hiding behind a curtain of pale blond hair and wearing all black with platform heels and red glasses. Julia nudges Quentin. “Just your type,” she says. 

“Shut the fuck up,” he whispers happily. 

The girl stands in front of the desk. “Do you have some glass?” she asks, and it’s as if the request is physically painful for her. The professor hands her a marble. She mutters a spell, and the marble begins to heat and sizzle, bend. It shapes, tapers, stretches into a small horse, which animates and gallops across the table. The class ooohs and aahs. Suddenly Julia and Quentin’s spell looks stupid and showy. This is real magic, beautiful and strange. 

“A homebrew, I think. Osteo’s Thermogenesis and something you came up with yourself, is that right, Alice?” 

The girl nods underneath her hair. Her horse continues capering. 

“Thank you. You may sit down.” 

She gently scoops the horse into her pocket and goes back to her seat. 

“That one,” Julia whispers. 

“What?” Quentin asks. 

“That one,” Julia says. “She’s the one to beat.” 

******* 

They’re smoking cigarettes, dangling their legs off the concrete berm when scarf boy approaches them. “Hey,” he says to Julia. 

“Hey,” she says. She and Q share a look.

“Shake it off, bitch,” he tells Quentin. “You wanna bum me? I’m out.” 

Julia tips him a cigarette, because she’s nothing but nice to everyone in the known universe. Quentin rolls his eyes. “You know he was the one banging on my door, right?” he says. 

“So? He needed his beauty rest,” Julia laughs. 

“I was hungover as a motherfucker,” the guy says. “I’m Penny, Taylor.” 

“Quentin. This is Julia.” 

“Nice to meet you, Julia, Taylor.” He sucks in a drag of smoke. “So, you two together, or —” 

They look at each other. They break into grins. 

“If by together you mean old Mathlete partners, then yes,” Julia says. 

“She beat up a kid for me in kindergarten when he called me a weenie,” Quentin says. 

“You’re still a weenie, Taylor.” 

“Don’t make me beat you up,” Julia warns. She holds out her arm. “He made me this friendship bracelet in sixth grade.” 

Quentin colors. “You’re the one that taught me to make them, okay? She made me this one.” He holds out his wrist. It’s identical, reds and yellows long faded into pinks. 

“Oh my god. You’re like the Brakebills besties. So no man on the horizon, Julia?” 

“I have a boyfriend back home,” she says. “He’s a linebacker with a neck as thick as your arm, he smashes beer cans on his forehead for fun, and one time, he lifted a car off a baby.” 

Penny sideways grins. He stubs his cigarette out. “Thanks for the smoke,” he says. “You look me up when you break up with him.” He saunters off. 

“Wow,” Julia says. 

“Wow what a dick,” Quentin says. 

“Wow what a hottie,” Julia says. 

“Oh my god, Jules, did you see his fucking scarf? He’s wearing a scarf. Like, an unironic scarf.” 

“Whatever. He’s cute.” 

“Whatever. You just like that he’s all take charge manly. That’s your type.” 

“Whatever. You think that Alice chick was hot.” 

“I do not!” Quentin flares. “She’s so not my type.” 

“You go for the pre-makeover, take-off-the-glasses-and-she’s-hot type.” 

“Shut up.”

“Shut up.” 

They smoke in companionable silence. 

“Wanna go get some lunch before our next class in magic school?” Julia elbows him. 

Quentin breaks into a grin and hops down from the berm. “Totally.” 

****

They’re eating dinner in the summer night, at one of the outdoor tables, when two upperclassmen appear and plop down next to them. The guy is tall, with dark curly hair; he’s wearing a vest, of all things, and immaculate french cuffs. The girl has perfect everything and looks like she’s stepped out of some catalogue where people spend a lot of their time on yachts. “Heeeeeeey,” the guy says. 

“Hey, you’re Eliot,” Quentin says. “Jules, this was the guy I told you about, the one who showed me to the exam. Eliot, this is my best friend, Julia.”

“Lovely to meet you, darling,” Eliot says. “And this is my best friend, compatriot, and partner in multiple felonies, Margo Hanson.” 

“Hiiiii,” the girl says. She tosses her hand in a casual wave. 

“Bambi, darling, this is the adorkable Quentin Coldwater I was telling you about.” 

She scrutinizes him. “Close up, he’s just as cute as you said he was. I do love all that floppy hair.” She reaches out and flips at it. 

Quentin colors. 

Julia snorts into her Dr. Pepper. 

“Soooooo, how is magic school, dear children?” Eliot asks. 

“It’s awesome,” Julia says. “We did a spell in class where Quentin and I made the lights all go out and —” 

“You spelled out ‘I AM A FUCKING MAGICIAN?’ That is so epicly cute. It’s all over school. And speaking of first-day spells…”

Alice rushes by them, a sandwich in her hand, turtled under the weight of a heavy bookbag. 

“Oooh, Alice Quinn,” Margo says. “I heard she wowed everyone with her little horsey spell. No shock there. She comes a family of magicians. Her brother was here at Brakebills a few years ago. Totally tragic tale.”

She pauses. Clearly, she’s waiting for someone to ask her to keep going. Finally, Quentin can’t stand it anymore. “So what happened?” he asks. 

“Her brother fell in love with this girl, see? Except she didn’t love him back. She was obsessed with this professor. And she thought that if she could make herself more beautiful, he would love her back.”

“And children, lesson one for you: never try to fuck with your appearance,” Eliot says. “It always ends badly.” 

“Well, this girl thought she could manage it. Except, hello, not. So she turns into this hideous beast-creature. Alice’s brother finds her and he loves her soooooo much he tries to fix her. And he niffins out.” 

“What’s ‘niffins out’?” Julia asks. She shifts on the wrought-iron chair. 

“Um, when you do too much magic and you overload and basically become this being of pure magic which sounds awesome but really, really really isn’t because you’re on fucking fire,” Eliot supplies. 

“So Fogg didn’t want her to come to Brakebills. Enough tragedy in the family, right? Except this year she shows up, all bedraggled from coming through the woods, twigs in her hair, demanding to take the exam. Sunderland felt sorry for her and made Fogg let her. And of course she passes and of course they let her in and now she’s here with her special mix of brilliant and insane.”

“Um, how do you know all this?” Quentin asks. 

“Bambi’s secondary discipline is gossip,” Eliot explains. He lights a cigarette and courteously blows the smoke away from their dinner. 

“Wow, that all like, sucks for her,” Julia says. 

“It would, if she were at all nice. Except she’s not,” Margo says. 

“Believe me, we tried,” Eliot says. 

“With her connections? Of course we tried.” 

“We failed.” 

“We failed spectacularly.” 

“She wouldn’t stop hiding behind her hair.” 

“She fled as soon as possible.” 

“Maybe she’s shy,” Julia supplies. 

“Maybe she’s a bitch,” Margo says. 

“Remains to be seen,” Eliot says. 

“But I would keep an eye on her,” Margo advises. “Word of advice.” 

“I’ve already got it,” Julia says. 

Margo leans in, boobs resting on the top of the chair. Quentin can see down her shirt. He tries, and fails, not to look. “Because word on the street, baby, is you’re the girls to beat this year. If you want to come out on top, she’s the one you’ll have to after.” 

“Behave yourselves, babies,” Eliot says, hauling Margo to her feet. “We have pressing business elsewhere.” 

“Petty theft,” Margo says. 

“Wine cellar,” Eliot adds. 

“Party on Friday, if you want to come.” 

“Of course you want to come. Eight pm. The Cottage. And Quentin, have Julia dress you.” Eliot takes Margo’s hand and they drift off into the night. 

“What’s wrong with my clothes?!” Quentin asks indignantly. 

“I think he means don’t wear a hoodie,” Julia says seriously. Then she breaks into a grin. “Quentin and Eliot sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G — or wait, maybe Quentin and Margo sitting in a tree — or maybe Quentin and Eliot and Margo —” 

“You shut up,” Quentin says. 

“You shut up,” Julia tells him. 

He kicks her under the table. She kicks him back. They grin at each other and finish their dinners.


	3. Chapter 3

On Friday night, Julia and Quentin find the Cottage. It’s not hard; there’s a steady stream of students stumbling in that direction, generally acting loud and ridiculous and setting off small spells. They’re both glad to have the distraction. Class has been hard. The work is backbreaking; their fingers are killing them; keeping up with Alice Quinn is nightmarish but they’re managing it by staying at least two chapters ahead of everyone else, sometimes more. They’re studying late into the night, every single night, sometimes jimmying spells around to make them work better to suit them and sometimes going straight by the book. Quentin’s fingers feel like they are about to drop off his hands. Professors have unironically recommended getting fidget toys to strengthen their hands. Alice is seen with one. So too, then, are Julia and Quentin. 

Quentin is beginning to see Popper exercises in his dreams. 

So they pregame with some whiskey for Julia and vodka for Quentin, then stumble over to the Cottage. They hear it before they see it, and it’s loud. People spill out onto the manicured lawn. Fairy lights twinkle rainbows in the garden. Everyone’s smoking and drinking and dancing to — is that Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”? They shove their way into the main house for some alcohol and to maybe, possibly, find some faces they know. It’s not long before they spot Eliot behind the bar, Margo seated on top of it in a very, very short skirt. It’s shorter than Julia’s and Quentin raised an eyebrow when he saw it. 

“You really wearing that? It fit you better in high school.” 

“You policing my outfits now?” 

“You’re the one who’s supposed to dress me.” Quentin had thrown open his closet. She put him in jeans and a plain black tee with Doc Martins rather than his usual Converse. “Docs are so heavy,” he had complained. 

“Suck it up, buttercup,” she had said heartlessly. 

“Ooooh, it’s the besties,” Eliot cooes. 

“Is that like, our nickname now?” Julia asks. 

“Yes,” Margo says. 

She shrugs. “Could be worse.” 

“Can I make you one of our signature cocktails?” Eliot asks. “Tonight it’s an American Pie.” 

“Whisky, rye, cherries, and some other shit he won’t reveal that makes it all play nice together,” Margo supplies. 

“Hush, Bambi. A magician never reveals his secrets.” 

She smacks him on the arm. “Oh my god. You’ve been saving up that line for like, years, haven’t you?” Margo is looking straight down at Quentin. She’s slightly above him, and from this angle, with her lean, he can see her cleavage. He can also see her nipples through her shirt. If her legs hadn’t been hooked back on a barstool, he probably could have seen up her skirt, too. The revelation makes him sort of woozy. 

“Hey, there’s Penny,” Julia says. She waves. “I’m gonna go say hi to the asshole.” She disappears into the crowd. Quentin knows her well enough to realize she’s intentionally leaving him alone with Eliot and Margo. He feels like a gazelle dumped in front of two ravenous lions. 

“So,” Eliot says, handing him a drink. The music’s blaring, but he casts something and it dulls in their immediate area. “There. Now we can talk. And we need to talk dibs. I call them. I saw him first.” 

“Ladies first,” Margo says from atop the bar. She unhooks her legs. Q was right: he can see up her skirt and what he can see is white lace glowing in the blacklight. 

“Finders keepers,” Eliot shoots back. 

“Um, how do you know I even like men?” Quentin asks. 

“You do, don’t you?” Eliot asks. 

“Well, yeah, but —” 

“Okay. So. Dibs. Maybe we should flip a coin.” 

“I can kick your ass at probability spells any day, Waugh. Push for it.” 

“You think you can beat me at Push, Bambi?” 

“What the fuck is Push? And who said I wanted to hook up with either of you?” 

They both shoot him withering looks. 

“You don’t even know me!” he says. 

“Quentin Coldwater. Yale graduate. Best friends with Julia Wicker since she punched a kid for calling him a weenie in kindergarten. Obsessed with the Fillory books and being one of the best magicians in his class. Known for messing with spells. Total dork, loves all things dorkish like Star Wars and Game of Thrones and The X-Files and Battlestar Galactica which shhh, is cool because so do we, except we draw the line at Star Trek, which you adore but I mean really, Quentin, must you? Voracious and fast reader. Misses his dog. Thinks Penny is a dick.” Margo folds her arms across her chest and smirks. 

“How did you —” 

“Simple recon.” 

“We broke into your room,” Eliot admits. 

“We’re not above extortion, arson, and petty larceny,” Margo says, examining her nails. “Or grand larceny, for that matter.”

“Bambi robbed a bank once,” Eliot supplies. 

“Truth,” she says. “And dibs.” 

“No dibs!” 

“Push for it.” 

“All right, fine. Push for it. Someone get me a deck of cards.” 

“What if I have an opinion here?” Quentin asks. 

They stop and stare. “Do tell,” Eliot purrs. Margo leans over further. 

“Give me some shots first and I’ll decide,” he says. 

Julia doesn’t come back. He keeps looking for her but doesn’t see her, and Margo keeps hooking him back with one of her heels. The music blasts, a mixture of Berlin-era Bowie, trance, and house. He does a few shots of top-shelf liquor. Margo drags him out to dance. She grinds up on him hard and her dress rucks up to mid-thigh. He’s getting too drunk to care that she can probably tell he’s hard. Then she twirls him back and hands him to Eliot. He’s hooked up with guys, but never actually danced with one before, and he’s totally awkward until Eliot laughs at him, kisses him on the mouth, and drags him to one of the couches pushed off to the side and kisses him again. This Quentin is familiar with: the divine scratch of stubble against his jaw, the warm taste of liquor in his mouth. 

“Hey!” Margo’s standing over the battered denim couch. 

“You got to grind on him,” Eliot says. “I get to make out with him. Fair’s fair.” 

“Fair’s not fair!” Margo stomps her foot. “The two are not the same thing, fuckstick.” 

By this point, Quentin is drunk as fuck, he can’t find Julia, and two upperclassmen are fighting over who gets to bang him. It’s all too much. He stands up. “I’ve got to run,” he says. 

Eliot makes a pouty face. “But the fun was just starting!”

“Awww, Quentin, we were just teasing you,” Margo says. “I’m sorry if we scared you off.” 

“We’ll be nicer,” Eliot says. 

“Wine and roses,” Margo says. 

“Scouts’ honor.”

“We’ll back off.” 

“We’ll be nice.” 

“You can pick.” 

“We promise.” 

“Pinky-swear.”

“Second only to word-as-bond.” 

“No, seriously,” Quentin says. “You two are acting like a date rape convention. I need some space.” 

“But do you like us?” Margo asks anxiously. 

“Yes, but —” 

“We come on strong,” Eliot says. 

“We know,” Margo says. 

“We get enthusiastic.”  
“We can’t help it.”

“We’re so sorry, Quentin,” Margo says, and he can tell by her eyes that she actually means it. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I’m just um, not used to it? It’s kind of a new thing for me to get hit on like this? So I’m a little convinced you’re kind of fucking with me?” 

“We’re not fucking with you,” Eliot says earnestly. “Promise.” 

“I’d also like to like, get to know you two?” Quentin says. “As like, friends? Before we — you know.” He’s glad the dark doesn’t show his ears getting red. 

Eliot kisses him on the forehead. “You’re so sweet,” he says.

“And I really do need to find Jules,” he tells them. “I haven’t seen her.” 

“Until later then,” he says. He give Quentin another kiss on the forehead. So does Margo. “Now get you gone.” 

Quentin says goodbye, stands up and scans the room. No Jules. He goes outside and looks, but doesn’t see her there either. Finally, at his wit’s end, he texts. 

Um little busy right now talk l8r bye

Quentin realizes he can’t find Penny either and rolls his eyes. 

********

He’s back in his room for at least an hour when Jules finally bangs on the door. She’s wearing PJs and a giant grin. “How were Eliot and Margo?” she asks. 

“Mildly terrifying,” he admits. “How was Penny?” 

“Oh my god!” She flings herself down on his bed. “That was like, the best sex of my life. Ever. So we’re standing there drinking, right, and he just goes, ‘Yes.’ Which is funny because I was just wondering if he would sleep with me. Then I wonder if he’d actually bother to get me off. And he goes, ‘Yes until you pass out and then again when you wake up.’ Which is just so fucking hot, okay? So we go to his room and he’s right, he totally fucks me and I’m on top, and you know I’m never on top because I can never get the fucking rhythm right, but he holds my hips and gets me into it and it’s so amazing, and all of a sudden my head’s like, wham! And I realize we’re floating, and I just hit my head on the ceiling! It was fucking wild! And yes, until I passed out and then again when I woke up. Oh my god, Q. Best sex of. my. life.” 

“But Penny? Seriously? He makes fun of me, like, every single time we see him.”

“He says your wards suck.” 

“They work! Except around him, for some reason. I don’t fucking know why. He’s always harassing me about it. I try to sing in my head to block him out and he just calls me Swiftie.” 

Julia giggles. 

“Shut up.” 

“You shut up.” 

“No, you.” 

He shoves her and she shoves him back. They smile into the dark. They’ve been doing this since they were five and it feels so familiar in this strange place, at this strange time, when everything is changing and the ground feels so unstable. It’s exhilarating here, Quentin thinks, but it’s fucking frightening too. He’s glad of her. He couldn’t do this without Jules. He doesn’t know if he would even want to.


	4. Chapter 4

“So I’ve been thinking about this Eliot and Margo thing,” Julia says to Quentin. They’re walking back to their rooms from PA, ready to hit the books for the next three chapters so they can stay ahead. They’ve progressed from heating their marbles to melting them to freezing them and shattering them, and now they’re working on disappearing them. They want to dematerialize and rematerialize them before Alice does, and that means learning more Popper configurations. Which sucks. Quentin fingers his fidget. His hands are still killing him all the time. He wonders if it will ever let up. At this rate, if he ever does get laid, he can’t help thinking he’s going to be sloppy at it. 

“What about it?” Quentin asks. 

“You should go out with them separately,” Julia says. “Get to know both of them.” 

“That was sort of my plan,” he tells her. They turn right, then right again. They’re starting to learn their way through the Maze by now. 

“So are they angling for a poly thing?” she asks. 

“I think so,” he says. 

“That’s kind of cool.” 

“That’s kind of a lot of work,” Quentin says. “Two people to keep happy at once?”

“Yeah, two people to keep happy at one.” She elbows him suggestively. “Your ears are getting red!” she squeals. 

“They are not,” he mumbles. 

“They so are.” 

“Are not.” 

“Are too.” 

“Are too what?” a familiar voice asks, and Eliot and Margo swing around the corner. He’s in his usual vest and french cuffs, and she’s in a short dress and heels, perfect makeup, perfect hair. Julia’s pulled hers up in a messy bun and is rocking yoga pants after a late wake-up, but Quentin’s thrilled with her for not flinching at some kind of girly one-upmanship. 

“Quentin’s ears are red,” Julia explains.   
“And why, dear Q, are your ears red?” Eliot asks. His leather satchel of books is subtly, unmistakably a Louis Vuitton. 

They stop next a fountain. “We were talking about polyamory.” Julia grins. 

“What about it?” Margo asks. 

“We’re huge fans,” Eliot says. 

“Ask us anything,” Margo tells him. “Don’t be shy.” 

Julia’s laughing so hard she’s holding her belly. She nearly topples into the fountain. Margo grabs her hard and hauls her back. “Girl,” she says. “You don’t want to fall into these fountains. Trust me. You might not come back out again.” 

Julia’s eyes widen and she backs away slowly. 

A huddle of three students hurry by. They’re carrying massive backpacks and have a haunted, furtive look about them. 

“Third years,” Eliot explains. 

“So tragic,” Margo supplies. 

“What?” Quentin asks. 

“Well, they’re all that’s left, baby boy.” 

“Of what?” Julia asks. 

“Of the whole third-year class,” Eliot says seriously. “They went on spring break? And they never came back.”

“What the fuck?!” Quentin says. 

“Well, you did sign the contract. Brakebills is not responsible for any accidental injury, maiming, or death that may occur from the use of magic, either proper or improper, on or off school grounds,” Eliot says.

“Basically, if you die, fuck off,” Margo explains. 

“So they just — vanished?” Jules says. 

“Yep,” Eliot tells her. “Never to be seen again.”

“Never to be seen again,” Margo echoes. 

“But seriously,” Eliot says. “Back to Quentin and his questions.” 

Julia can’t hold it in. The giggles start again. Quentin smacks her on the shoulder. She laughs harder. “Okay. So he needs to go out with each of you separately,” she manages. “Because he’s too dorky to think you’d be interested in him at all, let alone both of you together. He’s waiting for the candid camera to show up and tell him it’s a giant prank.” 

“Oh, baby,” Eliot says. “We would never do that to you.” 

Quentin’s ears are burning. He’s staring at the ground and he cannot believe this is actually happening. 

“Dibs,” Margo and Eliot say at the same time. 

“Push for it?” Margo suggests. 

“After lunch,” Eliot says. “One of us will show up to take you out tonight, Q. So have Julia dress you up and be ready at like, what time?” He looks at Margo. She shrugs. “7 o’clock?” 

“But Sunderland is handing out collaborative projects today,” Quentin says. “We’re supposed to have our first group meeting tonight.” 

“We get to pick groups,” Julia says. “I’ll cover for you, Q. And I’ll make sure he looks decent. Casual? Semi-casual?” 

“Semi,” Eliot says, with a glance at Margo. 

“See you at seven,” Margo says cheerily. 

“No, I’ll see you at seven,” Eliot says. 

They thread their way through the Maze, bickering good-naturedly the whole way. 

“I cannot believe you just set me up on a possibly polyamorous date,” Quentin says. 

“It’ll be good for you.” Julia bops him with her hip. “Let’s go cram before our next class, huh?” 

********

They show up in Sunderland’s class and take the front seats, as usual. Sunderland immediately launches into an explanation of their big project, which a piece of magic they’d flesh out and collaborate on in groups of three. It’s a ritual of some kind that will involve growing trees in the worst possible conditions — i.e., out of bare concrete — and they have to not only engineer the spell based on what they’ve learned so far, but also work out the metamath. Julia and Quentin grin at each other. This is going to be fun. 

The students begin to group up. Julia and Quentin stick close together, of course, and put their heads together to evaluate their classmates. 

“Penny?” Julia suggests. 

“He hates me, and you’re just saying that because you have a girl boner for him.” 

“I do not!” Julia smacks his leg.

“Surendra.” 

“He’s weak on math.” 

“I don’t fucking know then.” 

Sunderland claps her hands. “Everyone grouped up? No? Alice, looks like Quentin and Julia need a third. Why don’t you come up and hop in with them?” 

Quentin and Julia exchange a look that says everything their decades long friendship can manage to communicate without moving too many facial muscles. Oh, shit. Seriously? Her? For real? This is going to suck ass. 

Alice picks up her books, walks slowly down the stairs in the middle aisle, and sits at one of the battered desks behind Julia. She doesn’t speak to either of them, just hides behind her hair. And Quentin thought he had mastered that skill. 

“Okay, people, get to work! You’ve got the rest of the period to start fleshing this out, and then you’re on your own until this is due two weeks from now! I want to see some trees, people! Trees!” Sunderland retreats to her desk, where she begins scrolling through a cell phone and ignores them. 

“Hey,” Julia says. 

“Hey,” Alice says.

“So, um, I guess we ought to get started?” Julia ventures. 

“I guess,” Alice replies. “At least I can count on you two not to be total morons about this project.” 

Quentin and Julia exchange another look. “Yeah, sure,” Julia says. “Anyway, I think we should probably all read the prompt again so we know exactly what we’re doing, and —” 

“I don’t need to read the prompt again,” Alice says. 

“Ooooookay.” Quentin scrunches his nose. “So what do you suggest?”

“Look, we need to get down to exactly which type of growth spell we want to use, how we’re going to amplify it, how we’re going to power it so it works no matter where we tell the damn tree to grow, and then we have to make all the metamath between the spells coalse, divide it all up into three so we can manage to do the spell without growing extra fucking fingers, and do it all without fucking up so my grade stays exactly where it is. Oh, and we have to decide what kind of tree it’s going to be.” 

“Uh, why?” The question’s out before Quentin can stop himself. 

Alice rounds on him, her hair whirling around her face as her scarily intense eyes stare him down. “Because an oak, an ash, a maple, or whateverthefuck you decide to use are going to change the metamath enough to make a fucking difference,” she spits. 

“Let’s go with an oak,” Julia says. “Nice and simple. Acorns.” 

“Then let’s get down to it,” Alice says. 

The girls start to wrangle between the merits of various growth spells, flipping through books, pulling books off Sunderland’s shelves and opening them, then shutting them again and getting more books. They’re talking thermodynamics and time fluctuations and force pressure. Quentin adds what he can and retrieves books. It’s clear that Alice and Julia don’t agree on much of anything and would go about this project in totally different ways: Alice’s by the book, Julia’s more freeform and adaptive. Quentin would tend to side with Julia on the whole thing. Alice is becoming more defensive by the minute and Julia even chillier, which Quentin knows is a sign she’s getting really, really pissed off. 

Finally, the belltower sounds to signal the end of class. They make plans to meet in the library at seven-thirty that night to keep hashing out this project. Alice grabs her books, flips her hair, and stalks off towards the back doors. Quentin and Julia pack up and head out the front. 

“Oh my god, we were totally right,” Quentin says. 

“She really is that much of a bitch,” Julia agrees. “I didn’t think it was like, possible. I thought we were projecting our own academic insecurities.” 

“Seriously?” Quentin asks. 

“Well, yeah.” 

“I just thought she was probably a bitch.” 

Julia laughs. “You’re such a boy. And speaking of boys, you might have a date with one tonight! We have to pick out your outfit.” 

Quentin groans. 

“Oh, hush. You know you’re excited. I know you think both Eliot and Margo are hot.” 

“Yeah, but —” 

“I know. There are two of them. You’re intimidated. They’re intimidating. Well, there won’t be two of them tonight. So you can calm your tits and enjoy yourself. Now come on. We have to get you drunk and dressed.” 

“Drunk?”

Julia laughs again. “Do you think I trust you to act anything but terrified when you’re sober? I know you better than that, Coldwater. You need some shots in you. I’d do them with you, but alas, my date is much less better looking than yours and much more into pissing me off.”   
They’re smoking cigarettes on the wrought-iron picnic furniture on the house porch before heading up to the dorm when Penny walks up. “Hey,” he says. “What’s up, besties? Swiftie, you working on those fucking wards?” 

Julia blows a heart smoke ring at him. 

“Yes,” he says. 

She raises an eyebrow and stubs her cigarette out. “You can manage to dress yourself tonight, can’t you, Quentin?” 

“What? What are you —” 

“I’ll catch you after your date,” she says. Penny opens the door for her, and she follows him upstairs. 

“What the hell, Jules?” Quentin yells after her. He realizes he just got ditched for Penny. Penny who wore fucking scarves. Like, in public and unironically and when the weather didn’t call for it. Plus he won’t stop calling Quentin Swiftie, which is just an unending source of pissiness. So he likes Taylor Swift. Big fucking deal. It’s not like it makes his dick not work or something. 

Without Julia’s help, by five thirty, Quentin is googling “Semi-casual dress.” By six he has all of his clothes thrown on his bed. By six thirty he’s added his shoes and socks to the pile. By seven he still doesn’t know what the fuck to wear and someone’s knocking on his door. 

He opens it in his boxers. It’s Eliot. 

“A little forward, but me likey,” Eliot says. He slips an arm around Quentin’s waist and kisses his mouth. At a loss, Quentin kisses him back. Eliot tastes like champagne and chocolate and his stubble scratches a little and Q is starting to melt when he remembers his dilemma and backs off. 

“Julia ditched me to fuck Penny,” he says. “I don’t know what the fuck to wear.” 

Eliot throws his head back and laughs. “Let’s see what you got, kid.” 

After rooting through his clothes and discarding most of them, Eliot comes up with a white dress shirt, some tight black jeans, and the Doc Martins. “Don’t tuck the shirt in,” he says. “And we need to get you a more fitted one. But that’ll do for tonight. Unbutton that button — that’s it. Now roll the sleeves. No, that’s not how you roll sleeves, you troglodyte. Here, let me do it.” 

Eliot takes each of Quentin’s arms in turn and gently rolls his sleeves to his satisfaction. “There. Now you’re presentable. And no don’t you even think about a man bun tonight. Come on. We have to walk back to the Cottage before we can take the portal.” 

“Where are we portaling to?” Quentin asks. He’s a little nervous. He’s never taken a portal before. He wonders if it’ll feel like a portkey in Harry Potter. Or if it’ll be like walking through a door into Fillory. He hopes it’ll be like Fillory. 

“You’ll see,” Eliot says mysteriously. 

He holds hands with Quentin as they walk through the late summer night. It’s just starting to turn now, and the leaves rustle in the trees. “We make a good-looking pair,” Eliot observes. 

“Thanks, I guess,” Quentin says. 

“You’re so sweet,” Eliot says. “You really have no idea, do you?” 

“No idea of what?” 

“No idea how utterly adorable you are. And your ears are turning red again! Oh my god, I can’t even. Where did Fogg dig you up?!” 

“Yale by way of New York City,” he says. 

“Indiana,” Eliot says. “And don’t ask me anything about it. I need at least several more drinks and possibly some other intoxicants before I can even begin. Speaking of which —” He held out a joint to Quentin. “Dare you.” 

“What is this, seventh grade?” Quentin says, but sparks it with a snap of his fingers and takes a drag. He passes it to Eliot. They smoke in companionable silence for a minute or two. 

“I’m sorry about Bambi and I,” Eliot says. “I told her about meeting you on the lawn, and how cute I thought you were. And she saw you and thought you were cute too. She’s rabidly competitive. And we’re desperately codependent and we like to share, so. I know we come on strong.” 

“So are you two —” 

“Together? Can I check the ‘it’s complicated’ box on that one? Because we’re not really together but she’s my best friend in the entire universe and — oh fuck, I don’t know how to explain Bambi and I. We like to share. We like to share at the same time and yes, we’ve had sex. But not without other people involved.” 

“Gotcha,” Quentin said. “So, package deal.” 

“Basically. We sort of saved each other’s lives. Well, not literally. But really, we did. She had a fucked up childhood and — well, I’ll let her tell you her side of it. Let’s just say for now that neither of us emerged from our childhoods unscathed. What about you? Latent trauma?” 

“Uh, my parents divorced,” Quentin offers. 

“That sucks,” Eliot says dismissively. 

“I never felt like I fit in anywhere? Except with Julia. But now we’re here. This is where we belong. We never fit in because we’re fucking magicians.” 

“No,” Eliot said. “You’re magicians because you never fit in.” 

Quentin looks at him, doesn’t say anything. 

“You think magic comes from being smart? There are plenty of smart people in the world. You think it comes from hard work? It’s fucking hard all right, but that’s not it, either. You think it comes from talent? There’s plenty of wild talent out there in the world that never comes to shit. Magic comes from pain, Quentin. It comes from hurt. It comes from being hurt over and over and over again, from not fitting in, from not belonging. Magic comes from being lost.” 

Quentin takes another deep hit on the joint and passes it to Eliot. 

“At least that’s my theory anyway,” Eliot says airily. 

“It’s a fucking good one,” Quentin says. 

“Well, we’ve shot right past the what’s your favorite color, did you have a dog growing up — yes, I know you miss your dog — what extracurriculars did you do in high school and where’d you go to college right to the real shit, didn’t we?” 

“Yale,” Quentin supplies. 

“SUNY Purchase,” Eliot says. He stops. “Here’s the portal. Are you ready for the time of your life, Quentin Coldwater?” 

****

They end up in a high-end drag bar. There’s a Dolly Parton imitation contest going on, hosted by none other than the Lady Chablis (“She’s the queen from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” explains Eliot). Eliot takes a table, gets them top-shelf whiskey, and they settle in to watch the show, laughing and tipping the women who flit by their tables singing deep-voiced Dolly ballads. Lady Chablis keeps up a constant obscene patter and while Quentin’s never seen anything like this before, he finds he’s enjoying himself, and enjoying Eliot too, who’s whooping and hollering and laughing, pointing out the best imitators and rooting for them, slipping tips in garter belts. He holds Quentin’s hand the whole time, which Quentin finds unbearably sweet. He whispers in his ear. He puts his arm around him. And this is a safe place, full of gay couples, and for the first time Quentin’s on an actual date with a man and doesn’t feel like everyone’s staring at him. 

Eliot walks him back to the dorm afterwards. “I had a good time,” he says rather solemnly. 

“Me too,” Quentin says. He’s shy now. He’s finding he really, really likes Eliot, from the magic-is-being-lost speech all the way to stuffing dollar bills in a drag queen’s garter belt. 

“I’m really glad I won that game of Push,” Eliot says. “I’m afraid Margo the Conquerer would have scared you off.” 

“I’m really glad you did too,” Quentin tell him. “I mean — not that I don’t want to go out with Margo — I just —” 

“You had a really good time tonight, I get it,” Eliot says. “I did, too. I want to do it again sometime.” 

“Me too.”

“I’ll send you chastely up to bed, Me Too,” Eliot says. “Do it again sometime?” 

Quentin’s brave enough to step up to him. “Maybe not so chastely?” he asks. He slips his hands behind Eliot’s head. Eliot cups Quentin’s face in his hands and they’re kissing, and it’s everything Quentin was hoping for: the champagne and chocolate again, with a hint of whiskey this time, and he can smell the warm, expensive cologne and fresh-scrubbed smell that’s pure Eliot. The kiss is deepening and Q is sliding his hand up Eliot’s back when he breaks it off. 

“I promised Bambi I would behave,” he says apologetically. “Or else I’d try to take you upstairs.” 

“I’d let you,” Quentin says in a moment of sheer top-shelf whiskey. 

“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Eliot suggests.

“If you say so,” Quentin agrees, and Eliot follows him upstairs. He unpicks the wards on his own door, lets Eliot in. Eliot comes in and sits on his unmade bed. Quentin realizes his room is a wreck and is momentarily mortified. 

“Mine looks just as bad,” Eliot says with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about it.” He pats the bed next to him. Quentin sits, and Eliot cups his cheek in his hand. “I had fun tonight,” he said. “For real, Quentin.” He leans down and kisses him again, but it’s softer this time, gentler. Quentin kisses him bak and pulls him down on the bed. He feels rather than hears Eliot laughing. 

And he’s smiling too, through the kiss, as he begins unbuttoning Eliot’s vest. All those little buttons. “Help me out,” he pleads. Eliot laughs again, pushes his hands down and does it himself. Then he’s hard at work on Q’s shirt himself, and he’s pushing it off his shoulders, and Quentin’s pushing off his; they’re pausing to shuck off t-shirts and feel each other’s bare skin. Eliot stops a moment, leans down, unties Quentin’s shoes and his own. 

“And take your socks off,” he says. “I can’t stand socks in bed.” 

Quentin’s laughing again, this beautiful boy in his bed who can’t stand socks, socks, of all things, but who wants him somehow, who is palming him through his jeans now and making him groan softly. “Take it all off,” Eliot whispers. “I want to look at you.” 

And Quentin can’t resist that voice. He takes everything off, drops it on the floor. He’s naked, cock bobbing against his stomach, and so is Eliot. Eliot stares at him a moment, runs his hands over Quentin’s back, down to his ass. “Yes,” he says. 

“Yes,” Quentin echoes. He’s staring himself at the tall, sylvan man in front of him, the loose dark curls flopping over his forehead, the pale, pale, nearly hairless skin, the tight dark curls around his cock. He drops to his knees and opens his mouth. 

“Oh my god,” Eliot gasps as Quentin takes all of him in at once. “Yes. Like that.” His fingers tangle languidly in Quentin’s hair. Q reminds himself to breathe as Eliot hits the back of his throat; he swallows, licks at the base of his shaft. Eliot moans as he draws back and sucks on his head. 

“Do it harder,” he begs. But Q won’t let him go easy; he sucks gently and tongues his sensitive underside, then adds his hands: one tight on Eliot’s shaft, the other cupping his balls. He tugs gently. He finds a rhythm; he lets his suction draw harder and harder, his fist grips stronger and pumps fasters. He looks up. Eliot’s head is thrown back and his eyes are closed. “Like …. That … “ he murmurs. Quentin pauses to lick a finger and stroke the tight pucker of Eliot’s ass, and when Eliot shivers, he slides it inside to the first knuckle and begins fucking him with it. Suddenly, Quentin takes all of Eliot in again. With a sudden cry, he comes straight down Quentin’s throat, pumping again and again, shuddering and shivering.

“Yeah, that was worth the trip up here,” Eliot manages. 

Quentin wipes his mouth and smiles. He knows he gives good head; it’s one of his few talents in life that he’s quite certain about. He stands, kisses Eliot so he can taste himself on Quentin. 

“Your turn.” Eliot pushes him down on his back. “I’m going to make you scream, Coldwater.”

Quentin raises an eyebrow. 

“Like a little bitch,” Eliot grins, and oh-so-delicately licks the tip of Quentin’s cock. “You are going to beg. And you are going to love it.” 

Eliot’s right. He licks and teases and gently sucks at Q’s head until he’s whimpering and twisting beneath him. Only then does he even deign to reach that spot just underneath it, and then only for a swipe of the tongue or two before he’s licking up and down Quentin’s shaft, tongue flat against him, wetting him all over and driving him crazy. Then he dips down and sucks his balls softly, softly. He puts one finger in his mouth, wets it, and presses it to Q’s ass. Quentin moans. With a wicked grin, Eliot begins to slowly massage him, then slide it ever so gently inside him. His tongue keeps licking, licking cat-like at his head. Quentin bucks and squirms and starts begging before Eliot’s finger is even all the way inside him, before he crooks it to reach that perfect spot and Eliot starts sucking him in earnest. Half of minute of this and Quentin groans, thrusts at Eliot’s mouth, and comes so hard he reaches out to grasp the bed and it’s not there. His eyes snap open. He’s floating. Eliot is kneeling instead of lying on the bed now. He spits Quentin’s cock out and starts laughing. 

“Never done it with a magician before?” he asks. “I’m telekinetic. It happens about half the time. I love not warning people.” 

“You bastard,” Quentin says. He lobs him with a nearby pillow. But he’s still floating; his aim is off. Eliot laughs harder. Quentin realizes, with a start, that he’s swiftly falling in love with that laugh. 

*****

Eliot says he’d like to stay but he has to get back to the Cottage. High on telekinetic sex and half-drunk, Q goes banging on Julia’s door. She opens it up in her pjs. “What’s up, buttercup?” she asks. 

“I totally just had sex with Eliot,” he says breathlessly. 

“Oh my god, get in here!” she squeals. 

They sprawl on her bed. She pours them both screwdrivers. “Dish,” she orders. And he tells her about the whole evening. He even tells her about the sex, and doesn’t spare any detail because, well, it’s fucking Jules, after all, and oh my god, he was the person she told when she got her first period. Then he asks about Penny. 

“So are you two going to see each other again, or —” 

“After that, hell yes we are. If he’s up for it. No strings. It was awesome.” She kisses Quentin on the nose. “Anyway, I don’t need some boy trailing after me with flowers and candy. I have you.” 

“You have me,” he agrees. They curl up in her bed, back to back.

“So you didn’t meet Alice?” he asks into the dark. 

“Nope,” she giggles. 

“Oooh, she’s gonna be pissed,” Quentin says. 

“Yup,” Julia agrees. “Totally fucking pissed.” 

They both break into laughter before falling completely, utterly, and peacefully asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

“Where were you both last night?” Alice demands. She’s caught them after class before they can flee. Although, to be fair, they do actually have to work on this project at some point. 

“Uhhhhh…” Julia and Quentin look at each other. Both of them repress grins. Poorly. 

“Well, I know you were fucking Penny,” Alice says. 

“Excuse me?!” Julia’s stunned.

“I saw you go in his room. And my room’s next to his, it’s not like I couldn’t hear you. So where were you, Quentin?” 

“Why don’t you tell me?” Quentin says. 

“Because I’m not sure.” 

“Let’s do the library tonight. Seven-thirty. Try not to let your love lives get in the way this time?” Alice snarks, tosses her hair, and heads off in the opposite direction. 

“What a cunt,” Julia says. 

“No shit, Sherlock,” Quentin agrees. 

“Ugh, why did we have to work with her?” Julia says, as they leave the House and meander into the Maze. “Maybe we can petition Sunderland to switch us or something.” 

“She won’t do it,” Quentin says. “I heard she’s ruthless about that sort of thing.” 

“Ick. That sucks ass.” 

“Maybe we should just like, let her do all the work. That’ll piss her off and we won’t have to deal with her.”

“No,” Julia says. “We have to prove we’re as good as her. Anyway, her spellwork is too by-the-book. This calls for some creativity. It won’t work if you’re too rigid. And she’s as rigid as —” 

“Hi, besties,” Margo says, rounding a corner. Her arm’s linked in Eliot’s and they look perfect, as usual. Quentin presses his lips together and looks down. He knows he’s blushing. 

“I hope that blush is for me, baby boy,” Margo says. “Because you’re mine tonight. Meet me at the Cottage at seven. Dressy casual.” 

“Just wear what you wore last night,” Eliot advises. He tucks an errand strand of hair behind Quentin’s ear. 

“I’ll deal with Alice.” Julia sighs. 

“Are you sure?” Q says. “Because I can —” 

“No, you can’t,” Margo says. 

Julia cracks a smile. “Oh no, it’s totally worth it,” she says. 

******

Quentin manages a spell to unwrinkle his dress shirt, because Margo seems the type to object to wrinkles, before he picks her up at the Cottage promptly at seven. He brings extra cigarettes. He brings credit cards. He brings a condom. He has no idea what to expect. 

Margo’s waiting in the common room. She’s wearing a red dress that comes up to here and down to there and heels that could be used as weaponry. “We’re getting sushi,” she says. “I made reservations, so no worries. Come on.” She takes his arms and leads him to a portal. Suddenly, they’re in mid-town Manhattan, just outside a hushed, high-class sushi bar. Margo leads him inside. 

Their table’s ready. “I’m sorry about Eliot and I,” Margo says. “I know we come on strong. It’s just — that’s how we are, I guess. It scares the shit out of people, I know.” 

“It’s okay,” Quentin says. “I’m just not used to anyone chasing after me, let alone two someones. Let alone two someones as attractive as you two.” 

“You’re so sweet,” she says. “I love that about you. You have this core of pure sweetness to you. Like how you love the Fillory books.” 

Quentin’s head snaps up. “How do you know I love the Fillory books?” he asks. 

“Well,” she says, “there’s the Fillory emblem stamped on your man bag, which is Ember’s seal. There’s the collection of first editions in your room — yes, we broke in, and yes, you can be mad at us but don’t be too mad, we were only fooling around — there’s your email address, which is lostinfillory23@gmail.com, and there’s the Fillory paperback in your bag right now. Which you take out and read when you’re bored and don’t feel like studying. Plus your iPhone case is the cover of The World Between the Walls.”   
“You’re observant,” Quentin says, at a loss. 

“I’m thorough,” Margo corrects him. “Eliot likes you. I had to make sure you were good enough for him. And in the process I found out you were good enough for me, too.” Her eyes get soft. “I loved the Fillory books. Loved them. I tried to make my parents call me Fiona for weeks one time. I just wanted to spend my whole life under the covers with a flashlight reading about Sir Hotspots and the Cozy Horse.” 

“What happened?” Quentin asks. 

Her eyes darken. “I had to grow up,” she says. She sighs. “But I miss Fillory. I miss it so much.” 

“It’s right there waiting for you,” Quentin tells her. 

“Cheesy. And not quite true, because I’m a different fucking person,” she says. “But you never lost it.” She sighs again. “We have to have a real conversation, don’t we? Eliot told me you wouldn’t believe in it if I just slung around the word fuck a lot and showed you my tits.” 

“Probably not,” Quentin says. “That’s not really my thing. I mean, tits are. I mean —” 

Margo opens her menu. “Eliot was right. You’re adorable when you’re flustered. Oh, look, your cheeks even get red. Could you get any cuter?” 

“I’m not a puppy,” Quentin grouses. 

“No, you’re more adorable and less hairy. Thank god.” 

Mildly annoyed, Quentin flips open his menu and pretends to read it. He watches her over its rim. 

“So Eliot and I, when we came to Brakebills, we were both a mess,” Margo says. “Like, a royal fucking mess. We found each other. And suddenly that mess wasn’t quite so horrible. It got better and better and better, until it was finally fabulous, and we were us, and it was like we’d always been us and we always would be and as long as we had each other, we’d never collapse into that again.” 

“You’re best friends,” Quentin says simply. 

“It’s more than that. Did you ever read Wuthering Heights? I did and don’t tell anyone, but I know more poetry by heart than any of those mathletic fuckers have read in their pathetic lives. It’s in the context of a terrible line that’s totally not applicable, but at one point, Catherine says, ‘he’s more myself than I am. Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’ That’s Eliot and I. We’re codependent as all fuck and complicated but we love each other more than anything.” 

“So why invite me in?” Quentin asks. They pause to order saki. “You two seem perfectly happy on your own.” 

“We like to share,” Margo says. 

“Share what?” Quentin asks. 

She looks at him like he’s crazy. “Everything,” she says. 

“Okay, let’s back up,” Quentin says. “We got into the deep stuff really fast. Where’d you go to school?” 

“UCLA. You went to Yale.” 

“Favorite TV show?” 

“Swear you won’t tell?” 

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” 

“Tie between America’s Next Top Model and The X-Files. You?” 

“Star Trek.” 

“Gaaaaaaaah.” She makes a terrible face. The waiter appears, and they both order sashimi. He disappears again. 

“Favorite movie,” Quentin says. 

“Clueless and Being John Malkovich, but everyone thinks it’s Labyrinth because I’m such a Bowie fan.” 

Quentin suddenly realizes who made the playlist for the party at the Cottage. 

“Okay. This is boring. Never have I ever.” 

“You want to play never have I ever in a sushi bar?” 

“It’s more fun. I’ll start. Never have I ever … paid more than a hundred bucks for Fillory merchandise.”   
Quentin takes a shot of saki. Margo laughs in delight. 

“Fine. Never have I ever had sex outside.” 

Margo drains a shot glass. “Never, Quentin? Really?” 

“Not once,” he says. 

“Damn, we need to work on that. Never have I ever blown Eliot.” 

Quentin cringes. They both drink. 

“HA! I knew the two of you hooked up last night! I could see it in his guilty, guilty eyes.” 

“Never have I ever tormented guys by showing off my blacklit panties while sitting on a bar,” Quentin says, the saki hitting him. He leans back in his chair and watches Margo smirk, then take a shot. “You liked it,” she said. “And if you’re trying to slut shame me for tormenting you about Eliot, forget it. That was fun. Never have I ever tried to steal glances down a girl’s shirt while sitting at a sushi bar.” 

Quentin drains another shot. At this rate, someone’s going to have to carry them out of here. 

Quentin cocks his head at her. “Never have I ever recited poetry when drunk,” he says. 

Margo scowls and drinks. 

“Which one?” he asks. 

“Which ones,” she corrects. “Take a shot and I’ll share.” 

Obediently, he drinks. “We’re out of saki,” he says. 

She shrugs. “That’s likely for the best. Let’s see… I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked —” 

“Howl.” 

“April is the cruelest month —” 

“The Wasteland.” 

“Let us go then, you and I, while the evening is spread out against the sky —” 

“The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock.” 

“You fit into me like a hook into an eye —” 

“A fish hook. An open eye,” Quentin finishes. “I can’t remember the name of the poem but it’s Margaret Atwood. 

“You were an English major. You’re holding out on me, Coldwater.” 

He shrugs, grins. The saki makes his limbs feel warm and loose. “A man needs some secrets. Especially from the girl who breaks into his room.” 

The waiter brings their sashimi and they begin eating. Margo wants to try some of Quentin’s. He picks it up delicately in his chopsticks, feeds it to her like a baby bird. She meets his eyes. It’s an oddly erotic moment, holding the chopsticks, the eye contact, the salt and sea taste on his tongue. He doesn’t stop looking down her shirt. 

They leave the restaurant, paid by magical means, and stroll through midtown. Quentin takes Margo’s hand and she doesn’t object. They’re not quite swaying but they’re not quite steady, either. Nicely drunk. Pleasantly, wonderfully tipsy. 

“Tell me three secrets,” Quentin says suddenly, a line from The World Between the Walls. 

Margo smiles, and he knows she recognizes it. She stands on her toes and whispers in his ear. “When I was twelve, I was raped. I robbed a bank when I was eighteen. I think I want to fuck you tonight, Quentin Coldwater.” 

He kisses her in middle of the sidewalk. 

*************

They make love in her room at the Cottage. They’re so loud coming in, laughing and talking, grabbing a bottle on their way by the bar and drinking directly from it, that Eliot hears them, pokes his head out of his bedroom, moans, “I guess it’s only fair, Bambi,” and slams the door shut again. He takes her clothes off slowly, slowly, leaves her in a black g-string. She strips him ravenously, pushes him down on his back. He offers a condom but she laughs. 

“What do you think magic’s for?” Margo says. She chants a spell and flexes through some Poppers. “There. 150% more effective.” She takes him in her hand and slides him inside her. When he kisses her, she tastes of salt and sea and sharp rice wine. He loses himself in her, in the tight slipping friction, in the breasts dangling, begging to be sucked. She cries out when he takes her nipple in his mouth. The sex is slow and sensual and languid and suddenly it’s not, it’s something more, something wild and desperate and she’s reaching for him in the dark, calling his name, grabbing his shoulders and capturing his mouth with hers and bucking on him hard, hard, hard until he spills himself in her and she comes hard on him and it’s even better that way. 

They lie together in the dark afterwards. 

“I liked your last secret,” he tells her. 

“It won’t be a secret much longer,” she says. She rolls over and kisses him, then promptly falls asleep on his shoulder. He kisses her softly, writes a hopefully sweet note, finds his clothes, and lets himself out. 

*********

“You’re back la-ate,” Julia sings at Quentin when he shows up at her door. 

“Yeah. Well. I got entangled.” 

“Oh my god, you total slut!” She hits Quentin in the midsection. “You totally banged Margo!” 

He shrugs and grins sort of sheepishly. 

“Run it down for me, son,” she says. This time, she plops him on her bed and hands him a container of Hagen Daz. “Because you’re too drunk for alcohol,” she tells him. “How did you even get it up in this state?!” 

So he tells her. He doesn’t tell her Margo’s secrets, though. She understands and tells him she wouldn’t want to know them anyway. “Those are hers,” Jules says. 

“One of them was really bad,” he tells her. 

“That sucks,” she says. 

“How was Alice?” he asks. 

“Oh. My. God,” Julia says. “Q, we can’t work with her.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean we can’t. She’s so fucking uptight and obsessed with working all these spells by some kind of arbitrary rules she has made up in her head, I mean holy shit, she was bringing in all these books, and I was bringing in all these books, and we couldn’t even agree on what kind of fucking tree to make because of the differing thermal properties —”

“So it was a total fucking disaster.”

“Yeah, basically. She stormed out by eight.” 

“You lasted half an hour?!” 

“Yep.” 

“Well, fuck. Let’s just tell Sunderland we can’t work with her and do our own thing.” 

“Sounds good to me.” 

They curl up again, back to back. Q wonders idly if Margo would be pissed to know he’s falling asleep with someone else, then decides he doesn’t fucking care if she would, because this is Julia, for god’s sake. It would be like him getting pissy about Eliot. Jules falls asleep first, and Quentin lies there for a while, half-drunk still, listening to her breathe into the darkness. It sounds like home.


	6. Chapter 6

“I can’t work with these people,” Alice is telling Sunderland when they come in. “They’re completely impossible.” 

“She’s completely impossible,” Julia tells Sunderland. “She wants to go strictly by the rules when this is clearly an area that demands creativity and flexibility within the casting. It won’t work otherwise.” 

“We can’t even like, decide on a tree?” Quentin supplies. 

Sunderland sighs. She puts her head down on the desk. “Work it out,” she says. 

“What?!” Alice splutters. 

“Work it out,” she says. She raises an arm and waves at them to go away, as if they’re errant flies. “This is about cooperative magic. That means you need to cooperate with each other. So work it out.” 

“I don’t want to work it out,” Alice says. “I want reassigned.” 

“And we want to do this by ourselves,” Julia says. 

“Work together. Figure it out. Don’t be such precious little snowflakes about it, god.” Sunderland folds her hand back under her head, disturbing a precariously perched metal instrument in the process. It falls and shatters. “Fuck. See what you made me do?” 

“Ugggggggh!” Alice gives a hissy little shriek and stomps off. 

“So what do we do?” Quentin asks Julia. She shrugs. They go back to her room to study. After his dates, he has some serious catching up to do. Plus his hands are killing him again. 

******

They get invited, again, to another Physical Kids’ Party that weekend. Both Julia and Quentin get tanked before they even bother stumbling in the door. The cocktail of the evening is glowing. There’s blacklight everywhere, and random, harmless fireworks shower the partygoers. Eliot, as usual, is behind the bar. He kisses Quentin on the mouth. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten about me,” he says, and by the slight downturn in his mouth Quentin realizes with a shock that it’s true. 

“Oh god no,” he says. “I just had to study.” 

“Our Quentin is quite the scholar,” says Margo, wrapping herself around him from behind. “Hi, Julia.” 

“Hey, Margo. Hey, Eliot.” 

“Heeeeeey, bestie,” Eliot says. “I hear you and Penny — oh hey, Penny.” 

“Hey, girl,” he says to Julia. “You wanna score some of this free alcohol then head over to my room?” 

“Dude, uncool,” Eliot says. 

“Sure,” Julia says. “But I’m already pretty plastered, thanks Eliot.” 

Penny shrugs. The two of them head out through the crowd. 

“Well, that was definitive,” Margo says. She perches up on top of the scarred wooden bar again, under the glowing TADA sign. Quentin can feel the music thumping in his chest. Margo smiles down at him and opens her legs slightly. He catches a flash of blacklit white lace. 

“Bambi, behave,” Eliot tells her. “He’s mine this time.” He tangles his fingers in Quentin’s long hair. “I get him tonight.” He turns to Q. “Here, baby, drink this.” 

“What is it?” Quentin asks, eying the glowing concoction. 

“A little of this, a little of that, some magic.” 

“It’s the magic that really fucks you up,” Margo advises from the bar. 

Quentin takes it down like a frat boy and holds his hand out for another. Eliot raises an eyebrow. “Bold. I like it.” 

He downs the second, then lifts Margo off the bar. “We’re going to dance,” he tells Eliot. 

Eliot makes a sulky face. 

“Then come with us,” Margo says. “God, do you need an engraved invitation?” 

“I’ll watch,” Eliot says. “Or how about the couch?” 

They decamp to one of the battered couches lining the walls, scattering some other first years in the process. “Oh my god, everyone and Sunderland has had sex on this couch,” Margo says. 

“Whatever,” Eliot says. He and Quentin sit. Margo stretches out, her head on Quentin’s lap. Eliot tips Quentin’s head in his direction and kisses him languidly. Margo watches. 

“We could go upstairs,” she suggests. 

“I’m needed at the bar,” Eliot says. 

“Oh you are not.” She stands up, grabs his hand. “Come on. Coming, Quentin?” 

Q trails behind them up the stairs. If he walks far enough back, he can see up Margo’s skirt. 

They go into what must be Eliot’s room this time. It’s big, bigger than it should be from the outside in a House of Leaves sort of way. Eliot turns off the main light and snaps. Several salt lamps turn the room into the soft glow of candle light. 

“So, uh, how does this work?” Quentin asks. 

“We like to share,” Eliot says. 

“We told you that,” Margo says. 

“It works however you want it to work,” Eliot tells him. “You can watch. Both of us like to watch. But really it’s more fun of everyone gets to play.” 

“And how does that work?” Quentin asks. He’s both totally turned on and completely at sea. 

“However you want it to, baby,” Margo says. She walks over and palms his cock through his jeans. He’s hard already, like he knows she knew he would be. “See, you like this game already,” she purrs at him. 

Eliot’s behind him, reaching around to unbutton his shirt. Margo’s unbuttoning his pants. He pulls her dress over her head. She’s about to slide her underwear off, but he stops her. “Leave it on,” Quentin says. “I like it on for a while.”

“Quentin likes girls in lace,” Eliot teases. He’s working the buttons on his own vest now. Margo reaches up to help him. He stares down at her breasts. “God, Bambi, your tits are fantastic,” he says. He lets her finish with his shirt before he shrugs it off, then reaches down to cup first one, then the other. Then, as Quentin watches, he leans down and sucks, his hand on one, his mouth on the other, and Margo’s tilted back, humming with pleasure, running her fingers through his hair. He switches. His fingers flick at the wet nipple he’s left behind and she moans. Quentin feels himself getting stiffer, tenting out his boxers.

“Quentin, you’re not playing,” Eliot says. He reaches out, draws him in. One hand still on Margo’s breast, he cups Quentin’s face and kisses him. The stubble against Quentin’s cheek, the rough scratch of it, hardens him further. He feels Margo’s hand on him. Deftly, she pulls him out of boxers and begins stroking him. “That’s it,” she cooes at him. “That’s better. I know you like kissing Eliot. He’s a good kisser, isn’t he? I taught him that.” 

Eliot breaks it off. “You did not!” he says. 

“Did.” 

“Not.” 

“Did.” She standing in nothing but that white lace, hands on her hips, smirk on her face. Her hand still rests on Quentin’s cock, and she gives it a delicious tug with a slight twist. He groans involuntarily. Eliot’s head snaps in his direction. 

“Can’t let Margo have all the fun,” he says. He’s unbuttoning his pants. They drop to the floor. “Shoes off, people,” he orders. 

Margo rolls her eyes. “Oh my god. What if Q wants me to stay in heels?” 

“That’s up to Q. But no socks. It’s barbaric to fuck in socks.” 

“You can take your heels off,” Quentin manages. 

“When can I take these off?” she asks, motioning at the lace. 

“When you’re wet through,” he says. He can only manage these things under the influence of strong alcohol, and Eliot’s is starting to hit him hard. 

“Then help with that, brat,” she says. She sits on the edge of Eliot’s bed and spreads her legs. “You’ve been eyeing these all night. Put your mouth on them.” 

Quentin drops to his knees and buries his face in her. He’s always loved this, always loved the secret, folded flower of a woman’s slit before she’s really aroused, teasing his tongue in and out, licking it gently open to show the wet, dark pink inside. The urge to see is too strong and he pulls her underwear off, stares at her. She’s leaned back on her hands, fully exposed to him, perfect and pink, tucked up and neat. He hadn’t had a chance to look last time, to really admire her other than noting she had a Brazilian. “You’re not nearly wet enough yet,” he scolds. 

“Make me,” she challenges. 

Eliot sits behind her, lifts her wrists and lets her lean on him. Quentin imagines his cock tucked up against her back and has to stop himself from reaching down to touch himself. He starts with one long lick, from the base of her slit to the top of her clit. She spread her legs wider and opens just a little bit. 

“I said make me,” she says. 

HIs hands reach up and stroke the insides of her thighs, thumbs close, close to her. She sighs. He slips his tongue inside her folds, just a bit. He’s going to take his time with her. She whines a bit. His tongue slides just inside her and plays at her entrance, first in swirls then in flat, short strokes meant to bring out her wetness. She’s parting now, and when he pulls back, he can see a hit of pink peeking out of her. He licks up softly, softly, finds her clit. She stiffens. 

“That’s it, Quentin,” Eliot says. “That’s what she wants.”

He takes it gently in his tongue. It’s starting to peek out from under her hood now, and he knows he has to be very careful not to push her too hard. He rests the flat of his tongue against her and ripples against it. She cries out, spreads her legs wider for him. Content that she’s not oversensitive, he begins licking with the tip of his tongue, finding that sweet spot and licking, licking, licking with slow strokes. She moans. He puts his whole mouth on her and sucks gently. She’s going boneless against Eliot. 

“You must be as good at this as you are at sucking dick,” Eliot notes. 

“Shut up, I’m busy,” Quentin tells him. 

“Not for any longer, you’re not,” Eliot says. He lays Margo down on the bed, against her protests, and lifts Quentin to his feet. “Once she comes she’s no fun for anything, I promise. She’s a sleeper.” 

“Hey!” Margo says. “That felt really fucking good!” 

“Then jerk me off, Bambi, and I’ll finger you.” Some coconut oil zooms off the bedside table and nearly hits Quentin in the stomach. “That’s for us,” Eliot explains. 

“Uh, coconut oil?” 

“Best lube in the world, I swear to god,” Eliot tells him. He slicks his cock with it, reaches down and melts a bit onto Margo. She wiggles and bucks at the contact. “You are such a little slut sometimes,” he says fondly. He takes out another scoop, yanks off Quentin’s boxers, and spreads it over it. It feels amazing, slippery and warm but with a hint of friction left. Eliot begins jerking him slowly as his finger moves in and out of Margo. She twists and purrs, spreads wide for him. Quentin can see her now, wet and pink and swollen, her slit open and ready. He stares at it while Eliot works his cock. Then, reaching for the coconut oil, he lubes up his finger and presses it to Eliot’s ass. Margo’s pumping at his cock, and Quentin starts slow, a gentle swirl and petting. Eliot moans and bucks back at him, He takes the hint and slides a finger just the littlest bit inside. He’s tight. 

“Is that okay?” Quentin asks. 

“Oh my god yes,” Eliot says. “More, please.” 

Quentin slowly slides his finger inside the rest of the rest of the way, crooks it slightly. Eliot groans, jerks. Quentin uses more lube (in his experience, you can never use too much lube), and slides another finger inside. “Okay still?” he asks. 

“Uh-huh.” Eliot’s getting more incoherent. “Fuck me.” 

“What?” Quentin asks. 

“Fuck me.” 

“Uh, I’ve never —” 

“Christ on a tricycle, it’s not that hard,” Eliot says. “Loosen me up some more and put your dick in. We’ve both had enough to drink that no one’s going to feel any pain.” 

Gently, Quentin scissors his fingers. Eliot moans. “Do you want to lay on your back, or —” 

“On my back so I can look at you and Bambi can jerk me off.” He flips flat on his back. Margo curls next to him, and his finger stays firmly inside her. He leans down and sucks her breast again. She purrs. Quentin slicks up his cock with more lube than he’s ever used in his life. “Come on, Quentin,” Eliot urges. 

He lines himself up and slides inside. It feels different than a woman, a tight ring, then warm tightness all around him. “Okay?” he asks. 

“Please fuck me,” Eliot pleads. 

Quentin starts slow. Eliot’s still fingering Margo, whose hand is still resting on him, still jerking him off. He glides in and out, in and out, thrusting more gently than he would with a woman. Eliot moans, bucks. “Harder,” he begs. Quentin picks up the pace. “I said harder,” Eliot manages, and Quentin pushes into him. Eliot’s crying out now, thrusting up to meet Quentin. “I can’t —” he says, “Sorry, Q, I’m gonna —” and he spills thick white come all over Margo’s hand and his own belly. She keeps pumping at him, but gently, and Quentin matches her rhythm while Eliot shivers between them, coming down, still dribbling come with every shudder.

“Oh my god, you guys,” he says. “That was fucking fantastic.” 

Quentin pulls out. Eliot tosses him a washcloth. 

“My turn,” Margo says. “And you better fuck me hard, Coldwater.” 

Eliot props himself up on the pillows and holds her in his post-orgasmic bliss. Quentin slicks himself again and, throbbing this time, knowing he won’t last long because she’ll be tight and wet and hot around him, lines himself up with her. She’s dark pink, swollen, ready for him and nearly begging. Eliot’s hand finds her clit and starts rubbing in lazy circles. Quentin thrusts. She almost screams with pleasure, rakes her nails down his back. He does it harder, harder, holds her hips and pulls her into him. She’s keening now with the pleasure of it, with Eliot’s hand on her and Quentin inside her, and he feels her orgasm build and explode on him, the wet rush of her coming on him. He’s never felt that before and it sends him over the edge. He’s dimly aware of sparks flying off the two of them as they come down, as she flutters around him and he squeezes the last bits of come into her. 

“Holy. Shit,” he says. “I had no idea —” 

“That we were so good?” Eliot says. 

“That it could be like that,” Quentin says. 

“Any time, nerdboy,” Margo says. She kisses him lazily. “Even if you do like Star Trek. We like you.” 

“You know, we never have a boy more than once,” Eliot tells him. “Never. We kick them out and ditch them afterwards.”

“Stay the night,” Margo says. “You left the other day.” He can tell by her pout that she was a little hurt. 

He kisses her forehead. “I’ll stay,” he says, figuring Jules could deal without him for the night. He texts her: with e and m for the night. catch up in the morning. breakfast? xo q. Then he tucks his phone in his pants and, naked, they all fall asleep together in Eliot’s enormous bed, Quentin in the middle. 

*******

“Both at once?!” Julia squeals. 

“Shhhh, keep your voice down!” Quentin says. They’re in the Brakebills dining hall and who knows who the fuck can hear them. Alice is two tables away, for God’s sake. “Not at exactly the same time. But yes, both of them.” 

“Was it awesome?” she demands through a mouthful of blueberry pancakes. 

“Yeah,” he says honestly. 

“So are you going to like, have a polyamorous triad thing with them?” 

“I don’t fucking know. We haven’t like, talked long-term goals. What about you and Penny?”

She giggles. “I hit the ceiling again. And no, we haven’t like, talked long-term goals either.”

“Eliot and Margo are so close, I kind of feel like the boy toy they bring in so they have an excuse to bang each other,” Quentin says honestly. “I mean, it’s fun, and I really, really, really like them both, but …” 

“And Penny’s pretty emotionally distant and kind of a total alcoholic,” Julia says. “Plus he does this weird thing where he drifts off for a second and then snaps back, like he’s having these seizures except he’s not.” She forks another bite of pancakes. “But the sex is phenomenal.” 

“Same here.” 

“Well, we’ve got each other,” Jules says. 

Suddenly, their peaceful breakfast is interrupted. Alice stalks over to the table. “I finished the spell,” she spits. “The metamath works and everything. We just need to actually do it. So you two get off without any work and I get a decent grade.”

“Um, we were going to do our own spell this afternoon,” Julia says. 

“Good, Then we can meet up tonight and test them both. Seven o’clock, on the Lawn.” Alice flounces off. 

“Fuck, Jules, that’s not how I was planning to spend Saturday,” Quentin says. 

“It is now,” she says grimly.


	7. Chapter 7

They settle on an oak tree, because it’s the simplest and deals with thermodynamics the best. After dragging a pile of books out of the library, Julia and Quentin cobble together something that uses the standard nature spell, Gerhard’s Genesis, to get the tree to grow. They decide it will play best with an unorthodox synthesis of two different amplification spells, because the scope of field is so large, so they add in the McGruder Charm for basic amplification plus a stronger Saurian Complex for an amplification to the amplification. For a power spell, so the damn tree will grow out of bare concrete, they pick another nature spell they find in an obscure book that guarantees to grow tomatoes even in the most dire of circumstances, something called the Blacksoil Conceit. 

“The amplification spells with make it work for the tree,” Quentin says. “The metamath pulls it through, look.” 

They gather the materials they need from the school supply closets, which isn’t much, considering they’re using four different spells and growing a fucking tree, then divide the work into two so no one needs extra fingers. The only problem is that they need to draw a sigil on the ground, and that’s hedge-witchy type stuff everyone’s probably going to ridicule them for. But the metamath wouldn’t pull through without it. 

“Fuck it,” Julia say. “If we need a sigil, we need a sigil.” 

They finish by five, with enough time to grab dinner before meeting Alice. She’s skulking over by the forest, three binders and a bulging bag in her arms. “Let’s get to it,” she says. “This isn’t bare concrete but it ought to work anyway as a demonstration. I hope your Arabic doesn’t suck ass.” 

“It’s great,” Julia says. “I hope you’re up on your Old Church Slavonic and your Norse.” 

“I’ll go first.” Alice doles out the binders. “I’ve highlighted each of your parts in a different color and added the correct popper notionation to go with it. I know each of you have gotten past Popper 45?” 

They nod. Quentin’s fingers are aching because of it. 

“Good. Let’s go.” She lays some items on the ground, sets something on fire, and starts chanting. Julia joins in, flexes through some hand motions. Then Quentin. There’s a rush, a woosh of something. Quentin stops for a moment, pauses, while the girls keep going. It’s the amplification part of the spell, and it only takes two of them. Then for the power, they need all of them, flexing rapidly through popper sequences in tandem, chanting in perfect Arabic. A tree begins to grow from the bowl of fire. It goes up first, then puts down roots. They stop. It’s about head-high. It’s a slim ash. But it’s a tree. 

“Coolio,” Julia says. “Now here go Quentin and I.”

“Do you have a binder for me? And what are you, a fucking hedge?” 

Julia looks up from drawing the chalk sigil on the grass. “No, and no again. You get to watch and see what happens when you play with real magic.”

She and Quentin stand at opposite ends of the sigil. In the middle, they place the powders they’ve gotten from the school stores, the blood and bone. They join hands and begin chanting in Old Church Slavonic. They break, move counterclockwise in unison, flex through a series of Popper — 56, not 45. The amplifications are tricky; despite what Julia told Alice their Norse is rocky and they have to go slow, pronounce precisely and deliberately. Then their hands are flying now. They move again to different sides of the sigil, then join palm-to-palm and cast the Blacksoil Conceit. And leap out of the way, because a full-grown oak is suddenly exploding out of the ground in front of them. When it stops growing, it perfectly fills the sigil. 

Alice says nothing. She just turns and walks off. 

Quentin and Julia break in huge grins. They leap into each other’s arms, pounding each other on the back. “We did it!” Jules yells. “We did it!” It’s like they won the Citywide Mathletes and the statewide debate competition and tied the third grade spelling bee all over again but all at the same time. Except they grew a fucking oak tree. 

And a week of cramming, with sex slotted in whenever they can manage it, they fail. 

Alice tries to do her spell alone, because she refuses to work with Julia and Quentin, and while she manages to grow a small tree, she still fails because it’s not cooperative magic. Julia and Quentin grow an oak tree big enough to blow a hole in the ceiling, which makes Sunderland roll her eyes, and the rest of the students do titter at their sigil, but the tree is magnificent and beautiful and even better than the one they left on the lawn, spilling fall acorns (“I think it’s a white oak,” Julia had said). But they were supposed to do a three-way spell, not a two-way spell, and while Sunderland applauds their spell mixture and the way they thought outside the box, they get a zero. 

“Plus, of course you’re going to cast amazingly together. You’re best friends,” she says dismissively. 

Alice is seething. Julia and Quentin are seething. The rest of the class seems torn between gloating at their failure and being intimidated at the hole in the ceiling. 

“Well, fuck me,” Julia says. “We did the right thing the wrong fucking way and got punished for it. That’s fucking stupid.” 

Alice is standing at the doorway to confront them. “You made me fucking fail,” she spits. 

“No, you made yourself fail when you wouldn’t work with us,” Julia says. “We would have cast with you if you asked, but you stomped off like a petulant toddler. You were pissed our tree was better than yours.” 

“Yeah, well at least you failed too,” she says. 

“Our tree blew a hole in the ceiling,” Quentin reminds her. 

She lets out one of her hissy shrieks again and stomps off. 

“Does she have like, any friends at all?” Julia asks. 

“No,” Quentin says. 

“That’s like, really, really, really sad,” Jules says. 

“It’s not like she makes herself approachable, friendly, or in the least way likeable,” Quentin reminds her. 

“Yeah,” Julia says. “But being alone will do that to you.”


	8. Chapter 8

By the end of the first semester, they’ve settled in. Julia’s fucking Penny on a regular basis without any real commitment. Quentin’s sleeping with Margo and Eliot, separately and together, without the same. They pretend Alice Quinn doesn’t exist and still manage to stay a step ahead of her in class. Then one night, just after exams, someone wakes them by pounding on their doors. Their wards are broken, and they’re drug out of their beds. “MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE!” someone’s screaming at Quentin. It’s Eliot. “I came to find you special,” he whispers in Q’s ear. “Don’t tell. It’s against the rules.” 

“What fucking rules?” Quentin demands. “Can’t I put on some fucking clothes?” 

“No! Move it, firstie!” 

“Oh, shit, is this some kind of hazing bullshit?” 

“I said MOVE!” he yells. “Oh man, I could get to enjoy this. He eyes Q up and down, then drags him outside. 

All the first-years are lined up on the Lawn. They’re shivering. Quentin finds Julia and stands next to her; the only warming charm they know involves animal fat and they’re fresh out, since everyone’s in fucking pajamas, for god’s sake. Q wraps around Jules and hugs her tight. There’s no reason for both of them to freeze if there’s available body heat.

“Hey! Besties! Get off each other! No touching!” yells Margo, of all people. 

“What the fuck is this?” Quentin shouts back.

“Shut the fuck up, Coldwater! This is the trials! You’ll notice all the faculty is gone. You’re in our hands now, bitches. Some of you will stay. Some of you will flunk out. It depends on how clever you are.” 

First, Eliot and Margo divide them into teams. Luckily, Julia and Quentin are together, along with Penny, who bitches endlessly about Quentin’s wards and keeps zoning randomly, but still manages, somehow, to help. They’re given a seemingly impossible test and five hours to crack it. They’re down to four and half hours, all convinced they’re about to say goodbye to Brakebills, when Jules finally cracks the metamath and they all heave a giant sigh of relief. 

Then they’re in a forest, all with some weird implement and a strange task to complete. Quentin’s supposed to catch fish for Eliot with a bow and arrow. Eliot’s acting like an imperious jackass who’s never met him before. Julia needs to lasso a horse with a net. Penny needs to ensnare a bunny with a rope. “This is stupid,” Julia says. They switch implements and tasks, complete everything, and deliver the goods, smirking, to Margo and Eliot. Who are pretending Quentin wasn’t in their bed three nights ago. Problem solved, but he’s getting pissed at the act. 

Then comes the truth trial. 

All the first-years are paired up with whomever they’re closest to. A blessing, because of course Jules and Quentin are together again. They’re dragged to a random spot in the Maze, handed a ritual, told to complete it, and unless the ropes let them go by midnight, they’ll be expelled. They’re punchy and tired and achy by this point. Then they read the ritual. 

“Uh, we have to get naked,” Julia says. 

“Uh,” Quentin says. 

“Um,” she says back. Because in the whole entire time they’ve been friends, that’s the line they’ve never ever crossed. Ever. Sure, Quentin imagined it, back when he was in seventh grade and madly in love with Julia (hormones, and thank god he grew out of them), but they’ve never done it. He has no idea what she looks like under her clothes. None. She could be a Barbie doll for all he knows. 

“Okay, let’s do this,” he says. “Let’s not make it weird.” 

“This is just magic,” she says. 

“It’s just magic,” he agrees. He wills himself, that no matter what she looks like, he will not get a hard-on. Luckily it’s cold as fuck out here. 

They instinctively turn their backs to take their clothes off. Then, shyly, they both face each other. Julia is radiant: slim, high breasts, small brown nipples puckered in the cold. He tries not to look. She’s trying hard not to look at him, too. 

“It’s bigger when I’m not fucking freezing,” he says. 

She laughs, a bell-like noise breaking through the dark, and everything is fine again. 

“Now we have to paint each other,” she tells him. And they do it, carefully, exactly where the rituals tell them, across their foreheads and chests. The ropes tighten. 

“And now, we tell each other our deepest truths,” Julia says brightly, “Or we get expelled.” 

Quentin furrows his brow. “That’s it?” 

She puts her lips, raises her eyebrows, cocks her head. “That’s it.” 

“But that’s easy. I love you.”

She beams. “I love you too, Q.” 

Their ropes drop. Something is happening to their backs, their legs, and suddenly, they fly. 

**********

They fly. And fly. And fly. And they end up in fucking Antarctica, of all places, in the hall of a drunken Russian named Mayakovsky who alternately abuses and teaches them. He takes away their ability to talk. He forces them to perform spells without speaking, to memorize all the Circumstances: how to tweak what spell under a harvest moon, in the winter, based on the nearest body of water, on the bottom of the ocean, in anger, in sorrow, with total regret. Quentin absorbs it all. He’s ravenous for this, for magic without distractions. He lives in a tiny cell, visited regularly by Mayakovsky, who brings him fingers of peppery lichen vodka. Julia performs the same spells in the cell across the hall from him. They look up at each other, occasionally, smile, and get back to work. 

At first. 

It’s blissful for two weeks. He and Jules don’t need to talk, anyway. 

By three weeks, Quentin finds himself getting antsy. This is becoming boring. He’s performing the same Hammer Charm of Legrand, then Bujold’s Sorcerous Nail Extraction, over and over and over. His board is beginning to splinter and disintegrate. Jules has Penny to distract her some nights, Penny who still manages to make “Shake It Off” hand motions at him during meals. And who somehow found a fucking scarf to wear along with his standard-issue Brakebills South whites. 

He misses Eliot and Margo. He curls up with Jules some nights, but it’s far from the same. She feels like home. They feel like something else entirely, some kind of addiction that’s quickly catching up with him. He misses Eliot’s laugh. He misses Margo’s scathing wit. He misses, desperately, their rare moments of aching vulnerability. He misses the sex. He misses the cuddle puddles afterwards, the warm sticky safety of their bodies together in a tired, satisfied heap. He still sometimes wonders if he’s just an excuse, just a adorkable third plaything. 

He’s starting to think he doesn’t much care, as long as they keep him hooked into their glittering sphere: the holiday rainbow lights hung in the garden, the glowing drinks, the girl sitting on the bar calling someone a twat who’s his to share, the envious looks as they hook arms around one another, the sure knowledge of being in the golden center, in the warm heart of everything. Eliot throwing back his head and laughing. Margo drunk and singing David Bowie. Quentin lighting their cigarettes with the multicolored spark spell he and Jules came up with.

By the end of the fourth week, he is inventing things for them to say: about Penny’s scarves, about Mayakovsky’s stupid accent, about the terrible uniforms and the bad vodka. 

By the end of the fifth week, he is sleeping in Julia’s bed every night, or she is sleeping in his. 

They don’t notice when, in the middle of the sixth week, their voices return. 

They move from nails to controlling bugs. They have to control fireflies, make them fly through lit rings and glow on cue. Julia is terrible at it. She cries in frustration. “We were taught never to control living things!” she rails at Mayakovsky. 

“Then you will never be good magician,” he sneers at her. 

Alice whizzes her bugs through their paces and goes to bed early. Quentin’s bugs fly as well as hers. He stays with Julia. All night, she struggles with the tiny creatures. “What if you could be the bug?” Quentin asks finally. 

“What?” she asks. It’s impossible to tell time here, in the full pale of the Antarctic sun, but Quentin’s admittedly fucked internal clock tells him it’s around three am. 

“Be the bug, be the bug,” jeers Mayakovsky from the corner, where he’s slumped with his vodka bottle. 

“Will you shut the fuck up for one second?” Quentin yells at him. “Look. You’re trying to force it. What if you flowed into them instead? Used another fucking spell?” 

“Is no other spell, skaerling.” 

“What if we used the base of this one, blended in a bit of the psychic bonding we learned about in Van Der Wegh’s class? If we could make the metamath work, maybe stuck in a dimmer so your consciousness wasn’t completely absorbed in bug thought —” 

Julia is nodding. She looking, looking, looking for paper and a pen. Mayakovsky gestures at the desk in the corner. “Go play, skraelings,” he scoffs. 

He and Julia stretch out on the floor. They get to work. 

It takes them three hours and some mild psychedelics. 

By breakfast time, Julia is zooming the bugs through the hoops, lighting them on and off on command, and they aren’t dying afterwards the way all the others have. 

Mayakovsky stands. The empty vodka bottle rolls off his lap, and he claps slowly. “Bra-vo,” he says mockingly. “Bra-fucking-vo. They make you smarter in this loop, Quentin? You keep up with her now? What else did they change this time around, huh? You two fucking now?” 

“What?” Quentin says. “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“We’re um, not fucking,” Julia says. 

“What do you mean, this loop?” Quentin asks. 

“Psssssssht,” Mayakovsky says. “Go to bed, Skraelings. I wake you at noon for more bug work. You teach your spell to the others.” 

“No, what the hell do you mean by this loop?” Quentin asks again. 

“You don’t see. Only master magician see it.” He thumps his chest. “Go, skraeling. NOW!” He pounds the table at his side, and the bottle on the floor shatters somehow. Quentin jumps. He and Julia race up to bed. 

“What the hell was he talking about?” Quentin asks. 

“Fuck if I know,” Julia says. “Drunk Russian magic bullshit.” 

“That’s like, the motto for Brakebills South. Drunk Russian magic bullshit.” They both manage a smile. 

“Hey Q, thanks for helping me tonight,” Julia says, as they curl back-to-back again. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” 

“You’d have done it for me,” he says simply. 

“You could have left with Alice.” 

“No, I couldn’t have.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because I love you.” 

“I love you, too,” she says. 

They close their eyes against the strange Antarctic sun and finally, finally fall asleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Quentin hasn’t showered in three months. His hair hangs lank in his face. Julia’s isn’t much better. She’s taken to keeping it up in a messy bun all the time, and it looks like it may be starting to dreadlock in places. They’ve both lost too much weight: he can tell when he changes his uniform and feels his ribs, his sternum. Jules was small to begin with; now her wrists remind Quentin of bird bones. Alice and Penny don’t look much better. Their whole class is fading, drooping. 

Quentin is worried that sometimes, he talks to Margo and Eliot out loud. He can’t tell anymore. The light is too strange. 

But he can cast. He can cast like a motherfucker, like something dangerous. He sits in his room and fires off Chillinger’s Bird Repellent, meant to drive off sparrows. It’s like Sherlock shooting his gun at the walls. Bored, bored bored bored, he chants in his head or aloud, he’s unsure. Julia is off fucking Penny. He wishes he were fucking Eliot. Or Margo. Maybe Margo right now; she’s always so deliciously bitchy right up until those last vulnerable moments. But Eliot makes him laugh, makes it a grand game. The two of them together are the better, Quentin thinks. They play well with others. Wasn’t that what they put on the kindergarten report cards? Plays well with others? They wrote that on Julia’s.

Finally, it’s over. Mayakovsky kicks them out of a portal, and they tumble blinking onto the bright Lawn at Brakebills. It’s spring. The slanting sun spreads over their pale, pale skin; the grass itches their thin bodies, which haven’t touched unpickled plant matter for months. Quentin rolls in it, burrows his nose down to the bare dirt and smells the strong fertile scent of it. It’s real. He’s home. When he stands up, his bones creak and complain. He stumbles to his room, just behind Julia heading up to hers, and stands under the hot water for an hour, watching the dirt and skin slough off him. He is pink and clean and new again. It takes him far too long to comb out his hair, which is below his shoulders now. 

When he’s done, he bangs on Julia’s door. She answers wrapped in a towel. She’s too thin, but they’re home and she’s beautiful. 

“Let’s get some real fucking food,” Quentin says. 

“Oh fuck yes,” she agrees. 

They gorge themselves on cheeseburgers and french fries and actual fresh vegetables and fruit. They become violently ill. Margo and Eliot come looking for him, but he’s too sick to hang out. He and Jules are curled on his bed in misery, wishing for a TV and Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. 

“We did the same thing,” Eliot says sympathetically.   
“It was awful,” Margo argrees. She stands in the doorway. 

“Let’s portal them back to the Cottage so they can rest before they get assigned tomorrow,” Eliot says. 

“You mean so you can prop them in front of the TV and give them broth,” Margo says. She examines her nails. “You’re on your own. I don’t do barf.” 

“What?” Jules asked. She sits up, pale and wan, then slumps back down with a groan. “We get assigned tomorrow? Tomorrow? Fuck fuck fuck. We’ve got to get up, Q. We’ve got to feel better.”

“Assigned to what?” Quentin moans into his pillow. Eliot is gently petting his head and it feels so, so, so good. 

“Disciplines,” Margo explains. 

“And you’re both going to be Physical Kids and live in the Cottage with us and everything will be wine and roses,” Eliot says. “Now, come on. Margo and I will portal you back, but you have to stand up.” 

“Ugh, I hate making a portal from scratch.” 

“Bambi. You are not being very cooperative.” 

She sighs. “Fine. But you deal with the barf. I barf at the sight of barf. And I fucking hate barfing, okay?”

Margo goes to get some supplies. Eliot stays with them, pets Q and holds Julia’s hair once when she gets sick. “Thanks,” she says wanly. “I think we’re through the worst of it. You don’t have to do this.” 

“Oh god, yes we do. You just left the drunk Russian psychopath. Someone needs to wrap you in a blanket and feed you tea just to get over the psychological trauma. Were you hearing voices by the end? I was.” 

“I kept talking to you and you weren’t there,” Quentin says. “I was going fucking batshit.” He’s mortified that he admitted this and sort of rolls over but mostly hides under the covers. 

“Julia, are his ears red?” 

She peeks. “Yep.” 

“Poor baby Q.” Eliot rubs his back. “I’m here now.” 

Margo comes back with the supplies. They make a portal, but not before grabbing clean clothes for both of them. Julia and Quentin stumble through, and Eliot actually makes good on the blankets and tea. He also brings a TV down (“I’ll use my telek-whatsis powers,” he says in a Captain Murphy voice from Sealab 2021) and offers to put on whatever they want. “Labyrinth,” the both say immediately.

“Then The Dark Crystal,” adds Julia. 

“Okay, I’ll stay for David Bowie,” Margo says. She plops next to Quentin and rubs his hair. She smells so good. “Don’t barf on me,” she warns as the opening credits start. 

“Oooh, Labyrinth,” says Todd, coming down the stairs. He plops on the couch. 

“Go find something else to annoy,” Margo orders.

Obediently, Todd turns and walks into the kitchen. 

“I think I’m done with the barfing,” Quentin says. Eliot has gotten them both showered and changed and semi-human by now, and they’re sipping at cups of broth. Quentin nuzzles into Margo’s neck. “I missed you,” he says. 

“We missed you too,” she tells him, and he knows without looking that she’s being sincere. 

“Whatever, you probably had all kinds of boy toys without me,” he teases. 

She sits up straighter. His head tips off her, and he’s momentarily woozy while he straightens up. “No, we didn’t,” she says. Her brow’s furrowed, her lips sort of pursed and pouty and sad. “Of course we didn’t, Quentin.” She falls back down on against the couch. “God, I’ve run out of batteries on my vibrator like, six times.” 

Julia snorts. 

“Oh, come on, you had Penny,” Quentin says. He kicks her through the blankets. “I had my right hand and some spit.” 

“Oh my god, you are so gross,” Julia says, laughing. 

“What, it’s not like there’s lube in Antarctica.” 

“You could have always propositioned Alice,” Jules suggests. 

“Oh fuck, maybe in another timeline. One where she isn’t a raging cunt.” 

“Is there a timeline where she isn’t a raging cunt?” 

“I don’t know. They say every possibility’s possible so it stands to reason that somewhere, I’m madly in love with Alice Quinn.” He grins slyly. “But so are you.” 

“Ew.” 

“Jules and Alice sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G —” 

“OMG. I thought Eliot and I were bad. You two fucksticks are pathetic,” Margo says. 

“‘Fuckstick’ is a term of endearment from Margo,” Quentin explains. 

“Shut up, fuckstick.” She rubs his head again and settles him against her. “David Bowie and his manhood are about to come onscreen. I demand silence.” 

***************

They’re terrified for their discipline tests when they wake up the next morning, Julia alone in Margo’s room (“If you barf in there, I will rip out your fucking heart and eat it, bestie,”), Quentin in a warm pile of Eliot and Margo in Eliot’s room. The older students do their best to reassure them. “It’s easy,” Eliot says. “You go in there, they poke you with some instruments, they sort you into Physical, you come back here with all your stuff and we enlarge this room for you. Boom. Done. Simple.”

“I had to recite the alphabet backwards in Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic,” Margo says, “Stand on one foot, get put to sleep and have a dream, then have a conversation with a tree. Standard. No big deal. You literally can’t fail it.” 

Quentin gets a sinky feeling. “What if I don’t have a discipline?” he asks. 

“Then they send you to live with those tree-hugging Nature fucks and try again next year,” Eliot says, “So try not to let that happen, okay?”

“I know you’re telekinetic,” he says. “But what’s Margo?” 

“Cryokinetic,” she says. “I do a special kind of cold magic. I hold the record for breaking into the cottage by freezing the door and shattering it, and don’t you bitches forget it when you try to break in here later today.” 

They line all the Firsties up in the hallway outside Van der Wegh’s office for maximum anxiety potential and take them in one by one. It seems to take about fifteen minutes in most cases, but some are super quick, and some longer. Quentin doesn’t wait long before they call his name.

He steps into the office. Van der Wegh sighs at him. “Well, finally, an easy one,” she says. “We’ll just check as a formality, okay?” She sticks a weird brass instrument into his ear. It tickles. “Knowledge,” she says, “but we already knew that. Get out. Go see Dean Fogg.” 

He finds himself propelled into the waiting hallway, eyes staring at him. “Well?” Julia demands.

“Um, knowledge?” Quentin says. 

“Oh my god, Q, that’s so amazing! It means you don’t just do spells, you make spells, like when we did the tree thingie! You get to live above the library!” She sighs. “I know you’re bummed not to live with Eliot and Margo, but think of all the things you get to do!” 

“So um, I want to wait for you, but I’m supposed to go see Dean Fogg for some reason?” 

“Go!” she says. “Go! We’ll catch up later, okay?” With the last name Wicker, Julia’s the last in line, behind Quinn, Alice. Whom she is studiously ignoring. 

Full of trepidation and wondering what the fuck he’s done wrong, Quentin drags himself to Fogg’s office. His secretary waves him in. Shit. He must be in real trouble. Except Fogg stands, a smile on his face. “Welcome, Quentin,” he says. He pours two tumblers of whiskey and hands him one. “Welcome to the Discipline of Knowledge. I can’t say I’m surprised.” 

“Sir?” Quentin’s flustered. 

“It’s a Discipline I share, and serve as mentor of. You’ll live above the library — I assure you, the rooms are quite well-appointed and commodious — and have all the time you’ll like to develop your spellwork. Our discipline is part physical, part natural, part psychic and part straight intuition: in short, we encompass everything. If I’m not mistaken, Miss Wicker will be joining us shortly. You’ll both need to find the entrance to the dorms, of course, but that shouldn’t be an issue.

“Jesus, you look like hell after Brakebill South.” 

“Julia and I spent the past two days throwing up. We ate too fast.” 

He nods sagely. “Like half your classmates, I’d imagine.” 

“Eliot and Margo took care of us.” 

“Mr. Waugh.” He began pacing. “Mr. Waugh’s a good companion for you, Quentin. He and Margo are strong magicians. Very strong. You know Margo graduated from UCLA with a 4.0? Only other student in your year to achieve that was Alice Quinn. Eliot lit up our magic globe like a beacon for years, despite his lackadasical study habits and propensity for strong drink. They’re thick as thieves and nearly as close as you and Julia. Whom I hear is close to Penny, another good friend for you to stick close to.” 

Quentin snorts. “Penny hates me. He says my wards suck, which they don’t. They only suck around him.” 

Fogg peers over his glasses at Quentin. “Interesting. Very, very interesting Quentin.” 

“How so?”

“It’s not important. Have some more whiskey while we wait for Miss Wicker.” He pours him another generous few fingers. By the time Julia showed up Quentin is well on his way to being drunk.

“Jules!” he fairly squeals. “We’ve been waiting for you!”

A grin’s plastered over her face. “Still together, right?” 

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, bestie.” 

“Bestie.” She bops him on the hip that isn’t carrying a satchel. “Get this. Alice got sorted into Physical. I asked Van der Wegh. Eliot and Margo are going to be pissed.” 

“Welcome, Julia,” Fogg says. He gives her the same spiel he’d given Quentin and set them loose to find their rooms. 

“Well, shit,” Quentin says. “We know locator spells won’t work; they’ve been broken in the library for ages and ages.” 

“Okay. So I was thinking about that. What if we combined a locator spell with a Mann Reveal and a Anasazi Vision charm for good measure, just in case those fuckers made it invisible to one or the other, and attached the locator to charm to something other than a book — something bound to be found in a dorm —” 

“Alcohol,” Quentin says immediately. 

“So basically a spell to reveal alcohol. And we wander around and just, well, look. It’ll take a while but it’ll be worth it.” 

They sit down and work out the metamath. It’ll only take one caster, so they both do it, flex through some poppers, hold their hands up in a square, chant half in Anasazi and half in corrupted Egyptian. They start by walking around the outside of the building. And sure enough, back behind the library, there’s a staircase they’ve never seen before.

“I think that’s it,” Julia squeals.

Except the door’s locked.

Julia pokes at it, and a magical shimmer appears and disappears. “Shit, it’s a Koyosegi’s Ward,” she says. “With some kind of homebrewed chaser. This is going to be practically impossible to unpick.” 

“Well, we better get started then. I hope this is not going to be some kind of Ravenclaw riddle type shit, because I am so not into that.” The doubled wards take two casters working in tandem to unpick. They spend hours unlooping and unspooling the tangled knots of it, the magical swirls and rigid lines. It’s like defusing a bomb, but it finally goes with a bang and the door opens on its own. Three students are waiting in the doorway. They clap. 

“One of the fastest times ever,” a tall boy congratulates them. He hands Quentin and Julia tumblers of Scotch. “How’d you find it?” 

“We did a locator spell for alcohol shipped up with a Mann Reveal and an Anasazi Vision charm,” Quentin says. “The metamath played really well together. Then we just had to unpick your fucking wards. By hand.” 

A girl in a plaid skirt guffaws. “It took me all night to do that. I was on my own last year. I finally crawled back to Fogg for help.” 

“Did he help you?” Julia asked curiously. 

“Of course,” she says. “Part of true knowledge is knowing when you’ve reached the end of what you can do on your own, and you need to bring in someone else.” 

“And the other part is that magic doesn’t fix everything, hence having to unpick the wards by hand,” says the other boy, a dark-haired kid Quentin swears just looks like a fucking Slytherin, all dark eyes and combed-back hair. “Let me show you to your rooms.” He smirks. “Besties.” 

****

“You’re both in Knowledge?!” Eliot moans. He throws himself on the bed in despair. “You have to live over the library and we get fucking Alice?! Fuck. This couldn’t be worse. She burnt down the door, ignored the party we’d set up in her honor, said she had to study, and stomped upstairs. We haven’t seen her since.” 

“Well, sort of a cunt,” Julia says. 

“So what did Penny get sorted into?” Quentin asks. 

“Some weird discipline? He’s like, a psychic and something called a Traveler?” 

Eliot sits bolt upright. “Penny is a traveler?” 

“What the fuck is a traveler?” Quentin asks. 

“Only the coolest fucking thing ever. It means he can blink out and appear anywhere. Anywhere. He’s like this walking interdimensional portal.” 

“Interdimensional?” 

“It means he’s actually a hybrid between a human and a magical creature,” Margo says. She’s filing her nails. “It can be a serious drag. Like if you misaim and land yourself in a volcano, which happens with startling frequency, apparently.” 

“I better go talk to him,” Julia says. 

“Yeah,” Quentin agrees. She picks her stuff up and heads out. 

“So how’s the Knowledge dorm?” Eliot asks. 

“No one has ever had sex on their couches,” Quentin says. “In the history of ever.” 

“I am so ready for break,” Margo says. “What are you doing, Q?” 

“I don’t know. It’s just my dad at home. Jules’ mom is all rich and unavailable and we might just stay here.”

“I’m staying,” Eliot says. 

“If all you fuckwads are staying, maybe I’ll stick around, too,” Margo says. “It’s only two weeks, anyway. I can work on my tan.” 

“I want to see your tan,” Quentin says. He crosses the room, takes the nail file from her and sets it down. “I want to see your tan now. I need to evaluate how much tanning you actually need to do. It’s scientific. I’m a knowledge student.” 

“I need to work on mine,” Eliot says. 

“Shut up, you’re perfect the way you are,” Quentin tells him. “I like you pale. You’re like the elves in Tolkien.” 

Eliot and Margo burst out laughing.

“Oh my god, did you just compare me to Legolas?” Eliot says. He’s doubled over. Quentin realizes how much he’s missed this. “I suppose I should be flattered.”

“Oh, shut up. You know exactly what I mean,” Quentin says. “You’re beautiful.” He turns back to Margo. “Now. About that tan. Take it off.” 

“Take what off?” she asks. 

“All of it,” Eliot tells her. 

“You didn’t ask nicely.” 

“You want me to ask nicely? Bambi, take your motherfucking dress off so we can see your tits,” Eliot says. 

She turns around. “Unzip me, Quentin,” she orders. 

Quentin obediently pulls down her zipper. He also flips her hair out of the way and kisses back of her neck. She bows her head and grinds against him. He bites. She moans. 

“Off, Bambi,” Eliot orders. She drops her dress. She isn’t wearing a bra and Quentin reaches around to palm her tits. They’re high and round and her nipples are already puckered. Eliot comes around in front of her, bends down and sucks. He adores sucking on her tits, Quentin knows. He’s joked that he’d do it all day and Q isn’t quite sure it’s a joke. He reaches between her legs. She’s wearing a red thong that barely covers her and she’s not wet, not yet, still tucked up like a neatly budded flower. He’s ravenous for her suddenly. He hasn’t had sex in months.

“I want to fuck you,” he says into her ear. “I want to fuck you until you scream while I suck Eliot.” 

“Positionally, that’s a little difficult,” Eliot says. “You may have to alternate.” 

“Whatthefuckever.” 

“How about I fuck you while you lick her pussy?” Eliot asks. “I’ve wanted to fuck you for so long, Q.”

“Yes,” Quentin breathes, even though he’s a little overwhelmed by the prospect. 

“You just went through hell. Let us take care of you.” 

“Lie down on the bed,” Eliot orders. “And take your fucking clothes off, bitch.” 

Quentin shivers slightly at the command in his voice. He likes it. He likes it a lot. Eliot kicks his socks off, but he keeps his jeans on. Quentin’s suddenly spread-eagled, on his back. Margo’s positioning herself above his mouth. Her sweet, tight pussy is still light pink, still neatly closed. 

“You’re not wet enough for me yet,” he scolds. He puckers his lips and sucks at her clit the way Eliot sucked her tits. He’s gentle, but the pressure’s firm and even. She throws her head back and hums from the back of her throat. He spreads her open with his fingers, forces some of that bright pink, as if he’s peeling back the petals of a flower. He tongues at it, and as he does, he feels Eliot’s fingers rubbing his ass, slicking his cock. A finger slides inside him. He groans onto Margo. 

“That’s it,” she encourages. A tiny bit of salty wetness hits his lips. She tastes delicious. He shoves his tongue inside her and licks, licks, licks. She bucks on his mouth. He replaces his tongue with his finger just as Eliot, ever so gently, slips another finger inside him and crooks them both. With Eliot’s hand on his cock, Quentin jumps, the pleasure so intense. Margo laughs at him, then moans as he hook his own finger onto her g-stop and starts sucking again, lips pursed as he kisses her clit. 

Eliot is scissoring his fingers ever so carefully. Quentin tenses and relaxes into it. 

“You okay, Q?” he asks. 

“Feels good,” he manages. 

“Don’t stop,” Margo begs. “Don’t make me fucking beg you.” 

He stops. “Beg me.” 

“No.” 

“Beg me to suck on your clit.” 

“No.” 

“Fine. Ask me. Nicely.” 

“Q, will you please please please suck on my clit again so I can come?” she asks. 

“That was definitely begging,” Eliot observes. 

But Quentin starts sucking again all the same. The tip of his tongue finds the secret spot, just under her hood, that makes her crazy, and first just touches, then licks softly. He pushes on her g-stop. She rides his mouth. “I’m going to — I’m —” and there’s a warm rush over his face as she comes hard on him. He never believed in female ejaculation until he fucked her, and finds it’s unbelievably sexy. She rolls off him and lay down at his side. She’s breathing hard, shivering. He strokes her hair gently. 

“Q, can I?” Eliot asks. Margo’s hand replaces his on Quentin’s hard cock. She draws it up against his belly and begins slowly jerking it, playing on the underside. 

“Uh-huh,” Quentin says. 

At first, there’s a tight burning stretch, and a deep, full pleasure as Eliot slides past his entry and into him. He hits exactly the right spot and Quentin thrusts back, spreads his legs wider. “I’m not going to last,” he manages raggedly. 

“Neither am I, darling,” Eliot says, “you’re too tight.” And he begins to gently, gently fuck him. He rocks back and forth, back and forth, teasing Q again and again and again with the head of his cock. It’s almost too much but it’s just enough and Quentin grabs at him, finds his hips, pulls him forward with more force, more quickly. Eliot moans and begins pumping in and out of him. Margo’s hand jerks him harder. He explodes all over himself and her. Eliot sees him go, thrusts twice, and Quentin feels a warm rush inside him, a shudder, a jerk and a jerk and another jerk as Eliot’s orgasm peaks and falls. 

“Oh my god, how much did the two of you fucking come?” Margo demands. “I know it’s been a while, but fuck, it’s all over the place.” 

Eliot whizzes a washcloth over to her. She wipes her hands, her belly, Quentin’s belly. Eliot pulls out and cleans up, then hands Quentin another washcloth. Eliot’s come is dripping out of him and he finds the feeling rather more delicious than icky, the way he thought he would. 

“I missed you both so much,” Quentin says. 

“We missed you,” Margo tells him. “You don’t know how much.” 

“I know you still think we’re playing with you —” Eliot starts. 

“But we’re not,” Margo finishes. 

“You’re our boy,” Eliot says. “We didn’t touch anyone else while you were gone. We never do that. We just moped and drank and Bambi blew out the batteries on her vibrator.” 

“We were pathetic,” Margo adds. 

“We like you a lot,” Eliot says. “We’re sort of in love with you.” 

“How can you be sort of in love with someone?” Quentin asks. 

“I’m cultivating the art of understatement.” 

“I love you guys too,” Quentin says. “But this is all new to me, okay? The sex, having a relationship with two people who are as close as you are — and you have to respect how close I am to Jules —” 

“We get the besties thing,” Margo says. 

“It’s not like you’re fucking her,” Eliot says. 

“But you’re ours,” she says. “You can be hers too but you’re still part ours.” 

“That sounds good to me,” Quentin says. And he kisses both of them, a little sore but otherwise ebullient, and they all fall asleep in pile, like tired puppies.


	10. Chapter 10

“OMG, Eliot fucked you?! Did it hurt?” Julia asks. 

“Not til afterwards and then not much,” Quentin says honestly. They’re in his room at the Library, unpacking everything. Not that he has much. But still, he puts his beloved Fillory books on their places on the shelves — his new room has lots and lots of shelves, he notices — and hangs stuff, mostly Star Trek and his vintage Star Wars Christmas Special posters. “And I guess we’re now officially all going out?” 

Julia claps her hands. “I KNEW IT!”

“What about you and Penny?” 

She shrugs. “No commitments, he says. Except he keeps coming back, and he brings me deviant presents, like packs of Parliaments and alcohol and stuff and is just like, ‘thought of you, babes.’ So yeah, I think we’re sort of going out? I think he’d be pissed if I fucked someone else, and that’s pretty much the criteria. But he’s a serious alcoholic and he’s always popping pills. So there’s that.” 

She’s sitting on his bed, atop the comforter with the Brakebills key-and-bee, which rests atop standard issue Brakebills sheets. She kicks her legs against its oak-paneling. Everything in the dorm seems oak-paneled and hushed; the couches are leather, the coasters numerous, the alcohol behind the bar leans more towards high-end whiskey and scotch. “We need some vodka up in this joint,” Julia had whispered to him. The only noise comes from the spell rooms, special areas designated for practicing particularly dangerous, untested magic. These are warded out the ass and protected with numerous safety charms to keep the caster from exploding, catching fire, or disappearing altogether. There’s one room that’s completely sealed off. 

“Oh, they tried to drop it to absolute zero in there,” one of the other kids explains. “And they succeeded. One of the kids lost a hand because he wasn’t quick enough getting out. Fogg and the other teachers tried to reverse it but in the end it was easier just to seal the damn thing and leave it.” 

Everyone’s clothing tends to fitted suits for the boys and plaid skirts for the other girl. There is no television. No one has a cell phone. It is, in short, drastically uncool. 

************

Then summer comes. Glorious, glorious summer, when the term lets out in real-world July and so coincides with the end of Brakebills spring. Every seems to have stayed at Brakebills, everyone who counts at least, and Eliot draws a portal to some idly rich, blessed absent millionaire’s pool in the back of the Cottage, so they spent half their time swimming, Margo tanning naked on a chair when no one else is around. Quentin finds this incredibly arousing and usually ended up fucking her in the pool while Eliot watches. Julia catches them at it a few times and laughs and laughs.

Penny isn’t around. He’s doing some sort of special traveler training with someone, trying to learn to control his powers. He calls Jules nearly every day “because I’m so fucking bored I might die,” but really they have plenty of phone sex, according to her, and he tells her wild stories about appearing on the bottom of the ocean and inside a volcano and at the top of Mount Everest (and not dying in any of those cases). He says his aim is getting better. 

They get drunk, play Push, have sex and sleep in sticky piles, wake up and swim it off naked in someone else’s pool. Eliot turns out to be a spectacular cook, and when they aren’t pillaging expensive restaurants or ripping off Manhattan boutiques for new, Eliot- and Margo-approved clothing, he whips up amazing dishes: crawfish etouffee, shrimp and grits, oxtail. All paired with wines he’s stolen from Fogg’s private wine cellars. It’s a golden time, the rainbow lights twinkling in the garden, whomever shows up drunk on champagne and each other, the sunlight slanting from yellow to gold as Quentin dances with Eliot or Margo to Etta James, Billy Holiday. Margo makes them listen to too much David Bowie. Eliot sings along softly to Wilco while they make love in the dark: Let’s forget about the tongue-tied lightening/ Let’s undress just like cross-eyed strangers … I wanna hold you in the Bible-black predawn. And Julia, and Julia, and Julia: laughing, taking one more shot with him, setting off fireworks and blowing smoke rings for the sheer joy of it, dancing to Bon Jovi with Margo, sous cheffing for Eliot. They sleep back-to-back at night. They get drunk and roll down the hill like little kids, end up covered with grass and nearly throw up. They are golden. They are perfect. They are magicians, and they are everything. 

Then the Beast comes, and nothing is ever the same again.


	11. Chapter11

None of it, Quentin thinks later, none of it would have happened if Alice had just kept her fucking mouth shut. It all snowballed from there, from one bad fucking decision she makes the night of the back-to-school blowout Eliot throws the weekend school starts. Of course, everyone’s getting smashed. They’re drinking straight absinthe that night, the green lady, what Margo calls that green-eyed bitch, and Quentin can only manage three shots before he’s staggering stupid drunk. Margo is falling on him, laughing, and he’s carrying her up to bed because there’s no fucking way he can manage sex in this state. He doesn’t know Eliot and Penny have scored some coke. He also doesn’t know that Penny is down in the bathroom doing line after line after line, that Jules doesn’t know about it either, that Penny has gone so far as to start ranting about the voice in his head that won’t stop the noise and generally making an enormous scene. 

Alice bangs out of her room. She’s wearing the same clothes she wore to class, and it’s at least midnight. “Can you two shut the fuck up?!” she demands. “God, if you have to go fuck each other, can you at least do it quietly? Some of us are trying to study.” 

“We’re drunk, you stupid bitch,” Margo says. “Something you’d be if you got your tight ass down there and lived a little bit. Anyway, he’s too drunk to get it up.” 

“Yeah, probably,” Quentin admits. “Seriously, Alice,” he says, because he remembers Jules saying how lonely she must be, with no friends at all at Brakebills, “why don’t you go down and have some fun for once? Everyone’s not all that bad, you know.” 

“Fine. I’ll go down and have a fucking shot and what the fuck will that do? Make me study better? I’m here to learn, not fuck like a rabbit.” 

“You’re such a cunt,” Margo says. “And not in like, a good way.” 

“Is anyone a Healer?” Julia screams from downstairs. “We need a Healer!” 

Alice drops her books, shuts her two-tone door and races downstairs. Quentin and Margo stumble behind. Penny’s in the middle of the room, seizing. Eliot’s standing beside him saying, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” over and over and over. People clear out of the way for Q and Margo. Alice reaches Penny first. 

“He’s having a heart attack,” she says. “Someone get an actual fucking Healer, not some goddamn amateur!” 

Someone makes a portal to the infirmary. They drag Penny through. Alice follows. So do Quentin and Margo and Eliot and Julia. 

An hour later, someone comes out to talk to them. They’re sitting in a white waiting room, on the uncomfortably hard, orange chairs of waiting rooms everywhere. Margo has been throwing up from the absinthe, Quentin and Julia taking turns holding her hair because Eliot is tweaking so badly he can’t sit still. Alice doesn’t speak to anyone, but when the healer comes in, she stands up. “His heart attack was likely brought on by the excessive use of cocaine,” she explains. 

Eliot stops pacing and stares at her. “He’s on it, too,” she says, and points at Eliot. “They’re deliberating bringing hard drugs into the Cottage and I’m sick of it.” 

“How the fuck do you know?” Margo spits.

“I saw the baggie in his pocket,” Alice says about Eliot. “And I heard Penny ranting from upstairs, which is a typical sign of the excessive use of cocaine. He —” she points at Eliot “—hasn’t sat still since we got in here. He’s chewing his fingernails and twitching. I’m also sick of the constant partying, the constant drinking, and the way you people steal wine from Chambers and get drunk every fucking night.” 

Everyone’s gaping at her. 

The Healer calls Dean Fogg. 

Penny recovers fine. Except, like the rest of them, he’s on strict probation for the rest of the school year. That includes Julia and Quentin. Alice gets off free.

**********

“She is a raging cunt,” Margo seethes for like, the eleventh time. They’re sitting outside the cottage, eating one of Eliot’s magnificent dinners, plus wine they’re been forced to actually purchase, “like fucking plebians,” as Eliot said. “I cannot fucking believe the rat-faced balls on that scumsucking bitch.” 

“Bambi, you’re so mad your insults are no longer coherent,” Eliot tells her. “So we’re on probation. “Big deal. You know it doesn’t mean anything.” He stabs a forkful of pasta. 

“It means I will ruin that dumb bitch,” she swears. Margo hasn’t touched her food. “I will rip her heart out of her chest and eat it. No one fucks with us. No one.” 

“Fogg’s talking about shutting down the Cottage,” Eliot says miserably. “That’s the real issue. Fuck probation. I don’t want to lose my fucking house.” He looks around him wistfully, as if it’s going already. 

“The other Knowledge kids think Quentin and I are like, these giant druggies and they won’t talk to us,” Julia says. “We’re like, tainted or something.” 

“Well, fuck those stick-up-the-ass dickwads,” Margo says. “But I will ruin her. I will fucking ruin her. You just wait. It’ll take some time. It’ll take some doing. But I will kill her ass.” 

******

A month later, they’re all sitting in their boring-ass elective, Natural Elements, with Professor Bax. They’re supposed to be doing an extremely complicated spell to summon a nature elemental from a pool of water. Julia, Quentin, and Margo have already brought wood sprites out. Now it’s Alice’s turn. Everyone is bored as hell. Eliot’s actually asleep. Alice is halfway through the five-minute spell, chanting in ancient Greek and running swiftly through Poppers. 

“Hey Q,” Margo hisses at him. “Julia. Time to fuck with Miss Perfect.” 

She holds her hands under the table and mutters under her breath. Something wooshes by Quentin and seems to hit Alice in the stomach — a breath of cold air, he thinks. She stumbles the Greek, flips a Popper, but gamely keeps going. 

And what emerges from the pool is not a nature elemental at all. It’s a man, a tall man wearing a suit that wouldn’t look out of place just post-WWII. He’s whistling. He rises from the water as if he’s climbing a staircase, steps out, and glances around him. Instead of a head, his face is a cloud of swarming brown moths. 

Quentin tries to run. He’s literally frozen in position. So is Professor Bax. So is everyone. 

The man examines his nails. He has far too many fingers. He walks from one end of the classroom to the other, examining the instruments on the table, the chalk sitting on the tray at the bottom of the chalkboard. He flips through Bax’s notes. All the time, he’s whistling, whistling, whistling. It echoes in the silent room. Outside, Quentin can hear voices. They’re hammering on the window. The clock does not move. Nothing moves but the man, the things he touches. 

He walks over to the front row of students. He stares down at them, at Quentin, at Julia. At Margo and Eliot sitting behind them. “Quentin Coldwater,” he says, and his voice is rich in timbre, with a posh British accent. The moths swarm alarmingly close to Quentin’s face, and he can’t move to flinch backwards. “Back for another loop, are we? One more try? What is this, number eleven now?” 

He turns, keeps whistling. “And Alice. Lovely, lovely Alice.” A jaw appears under the moths, unhinges like a snake. Quentin can’t watch, but he can’t close his eyes. He can’t move. None of them can. He hears something like the sound of bone cracking. Alice can’t scream or move or flinch and it’s the most horrible thing he’s ever seen, ever will see, ever can expect to see and he’s screaming inside. They’re all screaming inside, at this man who cannot possibly be a man at all, who is splattering blood everywhere, everywhere, everywhere —

And suddenly, with a huge crash, the spell breaks. Julia’s on her feet and screaming her way through something in Old Slavonic. The-not-a-man slams back into the pool and sinks. Margo shrieks out an incantation and freezes it solid. Then she’s falling to the floor, blood-splattered, mute. Eliot dives for her. Quentin runs at Julia.


	12. Chapter 12

They call it The Beast, after. The professors say they have no idea where it came from, that it used a mistake in Alice’s spell to break through the wards. They deflect Quentin’s about how it knew his name, what it meant about the 11th time. Later, when he and Julia sit in the Dean’s office, this time wrapped in shock blankets they actually need, holding tumblers of whiskey, Fogg says it was babbling. It’s a monster. They say things just to fuck with you. 

“But there was this time at Brakebills South,” Julia says. “Mayakovsky made some drunk-ass comment like, ‘What, they make you smarter in this loop, Quentin? What else they change?’” She does a fake Russian accent. “What the fuck was he talking about? 

Quentin realizes that in the haze that was Brakebills South, he had forgotten that moment. 

“He’s a drunk,” Fogg says. 

“He meant something,” Julia insists. “He said only master magicians notice it.” 

“Mayakovsky is an unreliable drunkard who delights in fucking with impressionable students, but unfortunately he’s also one of the best teachers we have.” 

Julia shuts up. But her eyes say she isn’t done with this. 

“All that aside, you saved your classmates and possibly the school, Miss Wicker. I applaud your quick spellwork. You did all the metamath in your head?” 

She nods. 

“Truly amazing. Truly, truly, truly amazing. You’ll be a stellar magician one day, Miss Wicker. One for the record books. Now, I assume both of you want to go down to the infirmary to check on Miss Hanson. And I have a very unfortunate phone call to make.” 

They stand. They know they’re dismissed. Julia and Quentin walk slowly down to the infirmary. They’re still splattered in Alice’s blood. Q wonders if they should shower before they go see Margo. The answer is probably yes. 

“There’s something really fucked up going on here,” Julia says. “Something magnificently fucked up.” 

“You mean other than the fact that some monster from another dimension came out of a pool and fucking ate Alice Quinn while we all watched?” He shivers. He definitely needs a shower. 

“Yes. Something else. Something else is really, really fucked, Q. Something big.” 

“Hey, we need to shower before we go see Margo. We’re covered in —” 

“Yeah, I was thinking that.” 

“Would you do me a favor?” Quentin asks. “Would you — I know this is weird, but would you sit in the bathroom and talk to me while I take a shower and stuff? Just like, not look, but be there?” 

Julia catches his hand in hers. It’s small, like the rest of her, but her grip is strong. “Yeah,” she says shakily. “If you do the same thing for me.” 

******

They detour back to the dorms, ignore everyone’s questions, shower as fast as possible and head over to the infirmary. Margo’s in a back room, one without windows. She’s curled up in a bed with white sheets. Someone’s cleaned the blood from her face. Probably Eliot, who is sitting close in one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs, his hands on her on face, talking softly to her. When Q and Julia come in, he stands up. “Oh thank god,” he says. “I thought Fogg was going to keep you two forever.” 

“Is she okay?” Quentin asks. He pulls the other chair up to her opposite side. 

“I’ll be — you know what, do you care if I stay?” Julia says. “I don’t really want to be alone right now.” 

Penny appears in the doorway. “Knew I’d find you here,” he says gruffly. “Hey, Swiftie.” 

“Look, can you just not right now?” Quentin asks. “Fucking please?” 

“You did good, bitch,” he tells Julia. “You did the best.” 

She sniffles. “Thanks, bitch,” she says. 

He holds his arms out. “Come on. I’ll take you over to the psychic dorm, okay? Just for a little while. Lay low where no one can find you. Have something to drink. Chill out.” He half-grins. “You fucking look like you need it.” 

“Yeah, bitch,” Julia says. She walks into his arms. They close around her. 

“I’ve got her, Quentin,” Penny tells him. He walks her out. As reluctant as Q is for Julia to go, he lets Penny take her. 

Eliot and Quentin turn their attention back to Margo. 

“Hey, hero,” Quentin says softly. 

Eliot shakes his head vigorously. What? Quentin mouths. 

No no no no, Eliot mouths back. 

Why? Quentin asks. 

Eliot makes a cringe-y face. And Quentin knows why. Margo’s the one who fucked with Alice’s spell in the first place. Margo said she would tear Alice’s heart out and fucking eat it. And she didn’t have to. The Beast did it for her. Margo thinks she got Alice killed in the most gruesome, horrific way possible and she probably isn’t far off the mark. 

“You didn’t know what would happen,” Quentin whispers. “You had no fucking clue.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Margo says, in a voice that barely registers. 

“It’s not your fault.” Quentin tells her. 

“Is,” she says and he can tell by the way she says it that she believes it, blood and bone, body and soul. 

“You saved us,” Quentin tells her. “It could have come after any of next. Jules. Me. Eliot.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “My mess. I did it.” 

He gives up, gets in bed and curls around her. But she doesn’t settle against him the way she usually does. She’s a hurt thing, rigid, stiff as a doll. Eliot leans his head down to hers, presses his cheek against her hair. They stay like that, a circle around her, for a long, long, long time. 

********

Quentin finally sends Eliot back to the Cottage. He’s still blood-splattered. He stays curled behind Margo and just talks at her. Anything he can think of. He tells her stories about winning the high school debate championship with Julia. He tells her about how his mom left when he was ten and never came back. He tells her about the first time he watched Star Wars, with Jules, when they were seven. He just talks, and talks, and talks. He holds her. She’s boneless now with misery and guilt. 

The Healers decide there’s nothing wrong with her that isn’t psychological, dose her up with some potion, top her off with something that will keep her from hurting herself. Eliot brings her new clothes for the walk home. Quentin’s livid she’s still dressed in the other ones, the blood-splattered ones. He couldn’t see them under the blankets. They take her gently inside and put her in the shower, wash her hair for her, condition it the way she likes, brush it out. They might as well be playing with a life-sized Barbie doll. Quentin can’t believe they’d send her out into the world like this. 

They put her to bed and don’t leave her. 

Class is canceled for the rest of the week, anyway. From the windows, blasphemous with the light-slanting beauty of a fall afternoon, he sees them resetting and tightening the wards. 

He and Jules keeps up a constant patter of texts. 

She still isn’t eating 

Penny’s drunk again

Eliot made her drink some broth but she threw it up and i think she did it on purpose 

Penny keeps drinking

Leave him the fuck alone then

No something is really wrong with him Q

What the blue fuck could possibly be wrong with him he wasn’t even there

Idk but it’s something bad

Hes supposed to be taking care of you not the other way around come over here Jules what am i supposed to do she wont fucking talk 

No i have to stay here with him hes messed up you just have to keep talking to her 

Youre not his babysitter

Youre not hers

You know how i feel about her fuck you 

Do you know how i feel about him fuck you 2

I cant fight with you right now this hurts too bad

I know Q

It hurts really bad jules

Yeah it fucking does 

I keep seeing it 

I do 2

Its like this fucked up loop i cant get off 

Im coming over 

What i thought you couldnt leave p 

Now 

Julia bangs into the Cottage ten minutes later, hair in a messy bun, yoga pants, looking like she’d just run all the way there. “The loops, Quentin,” she says, when Todd shouts to him that she’s downstairs. “We need to find out about the fucking loops.” 

“Fogg won’t tell us shit,” he says. 

“Look, Mayakovsky made fun of you and said they made you smarter in this loop and asked if we were fucking now, like we’d been there before and not fucking and you weren’t as smart as I am. Then the Beast said you were back from another loop and it was the eleventh time. 11 loops, Q. What the fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t fucking know, Jules. I just know that Margo won’t fucking talk, okay? She won’t fucking SPEAK. Like no words come out of her mouth. I don’t have the mental energy to waste thinking about loops right now. I just saw Alice Quinn get eaten alive and one of the people I care about the most is up there trying to kill herself into catatonia. So don’t fucking talk to me about loops, okay?” 

“Shut the fuck up, Quentin. You can’t fucking help her and you know it, so grow a pair and listen up. You can either help me figure this shit out or not, but I will fucking figure it out.” 

Quentin sighs. He drops to the couch. He knows what she’s saying is true. 

“I can get Fogg to tell us. But I need your help.” 

“What?” he asks. 

“I need you to distract him while I drug his whiskey.” 

“With what?” 

“Truth serum.” She plops on the couch next to him. She knows she has him. 

“Jules, that’s fucking illegal. They’ll expel us for that shit.” 

“No, they won’t. Fogg won’t expel us. I don’t think he can.”

“Why not?” 

“Call it a hunch.” 

“So where the fuck are we going to get truth serum?” 

“Oh, we steal it.” 

“From who?” 

“From Fogg. In his desk. I need you to get his out of his office for twenty minutes while I find it and dump it in the whiskey. Okay? Then we have a nice meeting with our faculty advisor.” 

“Doesn’t that mean we get dosed too?” 

She grimaces. “Try not to drink the whiskey.” 

*****

In the end, it’s stupidly simple. Fogg is at a trustee’s meeting about the Beast. Julia slips in the office, finds the serum, doses the whiskey. They wait outside on the bad kids’ bench for him to finish up. When he slouches back to his office with a look of defeat, he brightens a bit at seeing them. 

“Julia, Quentin. Come in. What did you need?” 

“We, um, wanted to talk about a spell we’re working on?” Julia said. “It’s really complicated and we wanted your advice.” 

He ushers them inside, into the hushed sanctum of piled papers, of oak-paneling and the smell of old books. “I can’t say this is the best time, but I can’t say it isn’t a welcome distraction, either,” he says. “Come in, come in.” He pours them all tumblers of whiskey and sips at his. “Drink up,” he urges when he sees them just holding their glasses. 

Bottoms fucking up, Quentin thinks, and takes a drink. Jules does the same. 

“So tell me about this spell,” he says to them. 

“Tell us about the fucking loops,” Julia says. 

“Oh, fucking Jane Chatwin and her fucking time loops. She’s got this deadly Beast — yes, that Beast, the one that just chomped poor Alice Quinn like a canape — that keeps appearing from Fillory, and apparently only my students can stop it. Those students include — oh fuck me, you’ve done it again, haven’t you, Quentin?” 

“I didn’t do anything,” Quentin says. “It was Julia.” 

“You this time? Sometimes you all manage to get creative on us. Usually you’re the one who does the dosing, Quentin.” 

“Tell us about the time loops,” Julia says. 

“Jane has this fucking watch that resets time. So she sends the pack of you out to kill the Beast. And every fucking time, you fail, always in some horrid, bloody fashion that leaves at least Quentin dead and usually all the rest of you as well: mostly the same gang of you two, Eliot, Margo, and Penny. Sometimes Josh Hobermann and — well, that’s not important. She’s missing this time around. So once you all die, she resets time with some changes and edits to try to get it right that go round. And round and round and round we all fucking go.” He chugs at the whiskey. 

“So what did she change this time?” Quentin asks. 

“Well, you’re fucking smarter, for one, you two are closer, and all of you are less fucking traumatized than usual. Penny only spent time in one stable foster home instead of bouncing around. Margo got raped once instead of multiple times. You, Quentin, thanks to your close friendship with Julia here, weren’t hauled directly from a mental institution into Brakebills.” 

“I’m usually in a mental institution?!” 

“So are you two fucking?” Fogg asks. He flops into his rich leather chair and spins slightly. 

“God, no!” Julia snaps. “What the fuck is wrong with you and Mayakovsky?!”

“Do you want to be fucking?” 

“Um, it’s not really a question we consider?” Julia says. 

“Maybe for like, a while in seventh grade, yeah,” Quentin says. 

“You never told me that,” Julia scolds him. 

“Yeah, well, fucking truth serum, right?” 

“I probably would have gone out with you,” she says. “Anyway. So we have to go fight the Beast?”

“And the Beast is from Fillory? Fillory is real?” 

“Of course it’s real, you idiot. Haven’t you ever heard of a multiverse?” 

“And all this is controlled by Jane Chatwin? Like little Jane Chatwin? From the books?” 

“All grown up now, I’m afraid, and into quite a bitch.” He looks at his tumbler. “You did use a heavy hand with that serum, Miss Wicker.” 

“How do we die?” Julia asks. “So we don’t make the same mistakes again. How do we fuck up the other ten times? It’s ten other times we die, right?” 

Fogg waves his hand. “Oh, any number of ways. It’s not important. The game’s reset each time. The pieces change, Miss Wicker, and so does the board. Now get out, children, before I decide I need to take punitive action over your dosing me with my own truth serum.” 

Julia and Quentin stumble into the hallway. “Oh my fucking god,” Quentin says. “Fillory is fucking real.” 

“All that shit, and you latch onto the idea that Fillory is real,” Julia says. “You are such a deep-down nerd, Quentin Coldwater. We have to kill a fucking Beast, asshat. Or we’re all going to die.” 

“But why Penny? Only you hang out with Penny. He’s like, only present for the free booze.” 

“Because Penny’s hearing fucking voices, which I’m not supposed to tell you, and one of them is the Beast, which I’m also not supposed to tell you, and another is a girl he’s torturing who from the sound of it is being kept in a dungeon somewhere.”

“What the fuck, Jules?!” 

“Why do you think I didn’t want to leave him alone? And speaking of which — I want to get back to him. I know you want to get back to Margo. But she’s not going to get better, you know. She’s traumatized. That leaves a scar. She’ll be all right, but she’ll never be the same after this.” 

Quentin sags. He knows she’s right. It’s the truth serum. 

“You and Eliot can do everything you want for her, but ultimately, she has to fight her way out of this. And she won’t do it until she’s ready. So why don’t you take some time and come with me to talk to Penny?” 

********

When they get to the psychic dorm, they find Penny trashed. He’s sucking Jack Daniels like a baby bottle and blaring punk rock, which Julia explains is the only way to tone down the voices. They scream static in his head, she says, sometimes, and other times threaten to kill the people he cares about. Generally her. 

“What the fuck Jules? Why the fuck did you tell fucking Swiftie? We agreed —” 

He’s sitting on the bed in his messy-ass room, clothes and books and underwear thrown everywhere. Quentin wonders why either he or Julia doesn’t just use a cleaning spell on the place. They have to shout over the music. 

“Truth serum,” she explains. “We dosed Fogg and got dosed in the process. It’ll last a few hours.” 

“Do you love me?” he asks. 

“Yes. No. I don’t know. Sometimes, when you’re not being an utter dick. Jesus, please don’t take advantage of this, Penny.” 

He smiles crookedly. “Am I the best lay of your life?” 

“Yes, without a doubt.” 

He leans back on the bed, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. 

“Hey Swiftie, why the fuck don’t your wards work?” 

“I don’t fucking know! Why do you hear the Beast in your head?” 

“I don’t fucking know! But I’ve heard it since I was a kid. It’s always been there. It’s whispering. It’s talking to me. It tells me to do things that help me, how to do magic. It was my only friend for a long time. And then when it came on campus, there was this burst of of static and I could fucking hear it. I heard it talk to you. I heard it — talk — to Alice. I heard it scream when Julia threw it back into the pool. Ever since it’s been this non-stop fucking noise I can’t fucking get away from.” 

“It didn’t scream,” Quentin says. He stands awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. 

“Julia already fucking told me that, Swiftie.” 

“Can you please stop with the Swiftie shit? It’s old by now and it really grates on my fucking nerves.” 

“When you stop shaking it off, bitch. Anyway, I also hear this other voice. It’s a girl, and she’s screaming. The Beast is fucking torturing her. I have to save her. I’m the only one who knows she’s alive.” 

“Look, I’d love to help you pursue your little side quest, but my girlfriend is willing her way into catatonia so I’m going to head out now, okay?” 

“She’s your girlfriend now, Taylor?” 

“How fucking thick are you, dipshit?” 

They glare at each other for a moment. 

“Catch up with you later, Q?” Julia asks. 

“Yeah, text me.” 

“All right,” he says. But if he had had any idea what she was about to do, he never, ever would have left her.


	13. Chapter 13

“How is she?” Quentin asks anxiously. He comes straight from the psychic dorm the Cottage, only a brief stop in the kitchen for a protein bar. 

Eliot’s curled in the bed with Margo. “How are you, baby? Talk to Q. He’s so worried about you.”

Margo doesn’t say anything. She just curls up tighter. 

“Eliot, we need to talk,” Quentin says urgently. “Like now. And like outside.” 

Eliot pets Margo’s hair. “We’ll be right outside, Bambi. You call us if you need us, okay? Please? Tell me you’ll call us.” 

She doesn’t speak. 

Eliot kisses her on the forehead, sighs, and follows Quentin out into the hallway. “This better be fucking good,” he snaps. “Because she shouldn’t be alone.” 

Quentin takes a deep breath. And he explains. He tells Eliot everything. How they drugged Fogg. The time loops. The Beast. Jane Chatwin and Fillory is real and they have to kill the Beast or they’re all going to die. And Penny is hearing voices in his head. 

“Okay. Okay,” Eliot says. “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.” He takes out his enchanted bottomless flask and starts drinking. 

“Pretty fucking much.” 

“Okay, we’ve got to get Bambi out of bed. Task one.” He walks back into the room. Margo is exactly as they left her. 

Eliot leans down. “We need you to get up. We need you to get better. Shit is about to go down, and we need you. So get the fuck out of bed, stop wallowing in self-pity, and fucking grow a pair, bitch. My favorite bitch. My wonderful, brave, amazing fucking bitch.” He’s near tears. 

Margo sits up and slaps him. 

“That’s better,” Quentin says. 

She slaps him too, and it’s the best feeling in the world. 

“I fucking KILLED ALICE,” she screams at them. 

“And you fucking SAVED THE REST OF US, so —” Eliot casts a few poppers, murmurs in old English. And Quentin, to his shock, suddenly is overcome with the overwhelming urge to sing.   
Wake up you sleepyhead  
Put on some clothes shake up your bed

Eliot takes the next line, and he can actually sing.  
Put another log on the fire for me  
I’ve made some breakfast and coffee

Margo’s forced into it. The spell demands it. Her voice shakes.   
Look out my window and what do I see  
A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down for me  
All the nightmares came today  
And it looks as though there’s here to stay 

Quentin starts again.   
What are we coming to  
No room for me, no fun for you  
I think about a world to come  
Where the books were found by the Golden ones

Then Eliot.   
Written in pain, written in awe  
By a puzzled man who questioned  
What we were here for  
All the strangers came today  
And it looks as though they're here to stay

Then all of them, in a chorus, Margo’s voice strengthening:   
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)  
Don't you know you're driving your  
Mamas and papas insane  
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)  
Don't you know you're driving your  
Mamas and papas insane  
Let me make it plain  
Gotta make way for the Homo Superior

Eliot ends the spell. Margo’s eyes are shiny with tears. “Get up,” Quentin whispers. “Get up. We need to talk. Julia dosed Fogg with truth serum, and we all need to fucking talk. You need to hear it, and you need to be strong, because we can’t do this without you, you beautiful bitch.” 

She stands up. She walks to the shower. Eliot follows her automatically. “I got this,” she says in a voice that shakes only slightly. “I’m sick of being a fucking greaseball anyway.” And Quentin’s heart nearly breaks into pieces, because she’s cussing again, which means she’s halfway there. 

An hour later, they’re in Eliot’s room. She might be wrapped in a blanket. She might be holding a pillow. But she’s there. Eliot is holding her. “Look, this isn’t fucking easy and it sounds insane. But I’m dosed too, so I can’t lie to you, all right?” And Quentin tells her about the loops. He tells her about the Beast, about the voices Penny is hearing. 

“Fillory is real?!” Margo gapes. 

“I’m so fucking glad I’m not the only one who led off with that reaction,” Quentin says. 

“So we need to kill it.” 

“We need to kill it.” 

“Or we’re all going to die.” 

“Yes.” 

“Okay.” Eliot breathes. “Okay. So how do we kill it?” 

“Let’s run some probability spells and see. I’ll get Jules and Penny. We’ll need to steal the coins — someone’s going to have to take care of that — and the drugs. Penny can get us the drugs from the psychics’ supply, but someone’s got to get into Sunderland’s office to snatch the coins.” 

“That’ll be me,” Eliot says. “Chambers owes me a favor.” 

Quentin narrows his eyes. “Do I really want to ask?” 

“He’s quite the artist. I let him paint me.” 

Margo raises an eyebrow. “Were you clothed at the time?” 

“Does a strategically held Frisbee count?” Eliot takes a deep breath. “All right. We can do this. It’s not like I wanted to go to class anyway.” 

*****************

But Julia doesn’t answer his text barrage until well after midnight. By then they’ve gotten Margo up and changed out of pajamas, made her eat some real food. She’s not herself, but her mouth is getting fouler by the minute. She bitches at Todd when he solicitly asks if he can get her anything. She’s always touching Eliot or Quentin, but she’s upright. She’s sitting downstairs. She’s trying. Eliot slips out for a while to get the tokens and she spends the time plastered to Quentin. 

Oh fuck q. oh fuck. well be right over Julia texts him, and nothing else. 

She and Penny blow in about twenty minutes later. They look like they’ve been through hell and back.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Eliot asks. “You look like you’ve just survived Burning Man.” 

“We went to find that fucking girl, the one who’s getting tortured?” Penny says hoarsely. “Yeah. We found her. In fucking Fillory.” 

“You went to Fillory?!” Quentin gapes. 

“Um, we didn’t actually go there,” Julia says. “Penny astral projected and took me along with him.” 

“You astral projected along with someone? That’s incredibly fucking dangerous! If you don’t know how to do that, you can just like, lose your fucking body!” 

“Yeah, well, I was with her,” Penny says gruffly. 

“Yeah, well, what if you fucking lost her?” Quentin asks. 

“Well, I fucking didn’t, so there’s that, Swiftie!” 

“I swear to God, if you call me Swiftie one more fucking time —” 

“What, you’re gonna punch me?” 

“No, I’m gonna strangle you with your stupid-ass scarf,” Quentin snarks. 

Eliot snorts. 

“Shut the fuck up, Queen Bitch,” Penny snaps. 

“Motherfucker, he may be Queen Bitch, but he’s my Queen Bitch, so fucking watch your ass!” Margo whips back. Quentin finds himself deeply, deeply proud of her in that moment.

“Look, we have to work together and we have to do it now. Penny, you wanna tell them what we saw, or you wanna sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and let me do it?” 

Penny grabs a bottle of top-shelf whiskey off the bar, plops onto the denim sex couch, and gestures at Julia. His look dares anyone to tell him off as he unscrews the cap and starts drinking. 

“So we astral-projected to the source of this girl’s voice. And she’s in a dungeon, okay? And the dungeon’s got the seal of — well, look at Q’s satchel.” 

Penny makes a noise in his throat. “You mean his man-purse.” 

“Shut the fuck up.” 

“Whatever, Swiftie.”

“Anyway, it’s got Ember and Umber’s seal on it. So we’re in Fillory, basically. I think, based on the architectural style, that we were actually in the dungeons in Castle Whitespire.” 

“Oh, shit,” Margo breathes. 

“No fucking way,” Quentin says. 

“Will you two stop nerding out and remember that someone’s getting fucking tortured here?” Penny demands. 

“So this girl is hanging by chains. She’s got cuts all over her and it looks like she’s been hanging there for a while, like more than a day or so. And then the Beast comes in.” Julia shudders. “It’s the same as it was in the classroom. Penny can hear it in his head even on the astral plane.” 

“Yeah, it was like this fucked up double-voice shit, like when you hear yourself talking into a microphone.” 

“So this girl is hanging there, and it threatens her, tells her she can’t travel, the chains have sigils on them that keep her there, and that she already knows that. He asks if she’s ready to help him now. Then he says if she won’t help she can keep hanging there until she does or she dies. Or he decides to eat her. And he fucking leaves. She starts screaming for someone to get her out. So then we take a peek in the cell next to her. And it’s this old, old man in there. He’s decrepit as shit and muttering about nothing. So yeah. We have to get there and rescue them.” 

“You’re saying we have to go to Fillory,” Quentin says flatly. 

“Yes,” Penny says.

“To rescue some girl we don’t even fucking know.” 

“I know she’s a traveler! That’s enough. And we know the Beast has her, which is doubly enough.” 

“And how the fuck are we supposed to get to Fillory?” Eliot says. “Because last I checked, it wasn’t like you could buy a fucking plane ticket.” 

“Can’t we do this like, after we kill the Beast?” Quentin asks. 

“How the fuck are we supposed to do that?” Penny says.

“I don’t fucking know!” Quentin shouts. “All I know is Fogg says we’re all going to die if we don’t!”

“Look,” Julia says. She drops to the scarred hardwood floor. “We got the shit for the probability spells. As long as Eliot —” 

Eliot holds up a bag. “Asked and answered, bitches.” 

“Get some fucking buckets,” Penny says. “Because ayahuasca will fucking make you hurl, people.” 

They all sit in a circle, even Margo. They each take a token. And they set up a scenario, and they run as many spells as they have enough tokens for. Margo, Julia, and Quentin all throw up, violently so. After each spell, they come up gasping and screaming, having just witnessed or experienced their own bloody deaths at the hands of the Beast. 

“Well, we’re fucked,” Eliot says. He motions to Penny, who passes him the bottle. “A few weeks, and we’re fucking dead.”

Margo is sobbing. Julia and Quentin have their arms around her. They needed her to do the spell, but she clearly wasn’t strong enough to handle seeing the results, to see the Beast kill her friends over and over and over. 

“We’re not fucked,” Quentin says. “There’s one spell that didn’t fuck us. When we went to Fillory. That time, everything just went white. I’ll take that over certain death.” 

“So we’re back to the fundamental question. How the fuck do we get to Fillory and kill the fucking beast?” Penny asks. 

Julia and Quentin look at each other. “There are these buttons,” Quentin suggests. He explains the buttons the ferrets in The Wandering Dune give to Jane Chatwin. “But Fiona says they’re too easy and hides them. Jane never finds them. And that’s where the book ends. They have to be out there somewhere.” 

“There’s one other place,” Margo says. She looks up from her tears. “The clock.” 

“Wait,” Quentin says. “I fucking saw that clock. When Jules and I went to our Yales interviews, right before we got into Brakebills? The clock was there. I mean, I’m sure it got sold when the guy died, but we could track it down, right? And it’s not a sure bet — I mean it stopped working eventually — but it’s worth a shot.” 

“Are you sure it was the right fucking clock?” Penny asks. 

“No, but do you have a better idea?” 

“Okay, so we split up, try to track down the buttons and try to get the clock,” Eliot says. “Okay. We know the Chatwins were real people who lived next door to Christopher Plover. So we can give Plover’s house a shot. Margo, Penny, and I can take point on that. Quentin and Julia —” 

“We don’t split up,” Margo says. 

“What do you mean, we don’t split up?” Penny says. “We need to get this shit done. Like, stat.” 

“Didn’t you fucksticks ever watch Scooby Doo? Or any horror movie in the history of ever? Splitting up is mistake number one. We don’t split up. We do this together or we don’t do it at all. Period.” 

“She’s got a point,” Julia admits. 

Quentin sees Margo squeeze her hand. 

“Okay, okay, so we go to Plover’s house and then we try to find the clock. Got it. Fine. Whatever,” Penny says. 

“Well, no time like the present, babies,” Eliot says. “We let the magical mystery tour wear off, then take the portal Bambi and I made to our favorite pub in London, and Q, you know where Plover lived?” 

“Darras House. Cornwall.” 

“I knew you wouldn’t fail us, nerd boy. So we rent a car and go there. Let’s do it.”


	14. Chapter 14

And it’s hell. 

There are ghost children. Quentin and Penny see Plover molesting Martin Chatwin. The housekeeper is crazed and they end up having to go grave robbing. But they find the button in the pocket of a dead kid. Then they get the fuck out, because there’s nothing they can do to help the ghosts, and anyway, the Plover house is a real-life horror show. Margo throws up in the bushes. 

In the very English, cobblestone driveway, Penny touches the button. He disappears. 

****

For a few days, they hear nothing from Penny. Julia becomes increasingly frantic over him; the others are worried they lost their one ticket to Fillory. In the meantime, Eliot and Quentin try to track down the clock and find the auction records sealed. They have to resort to finding the auctioneer, who refuses to talk. But Julia stalks him in a bar one night. He’s more partial to her friend, Margo. When he goes to the bathroom, Julia dumps the rest of the truth serum into his drink and gets the hell out. Margo flirts like she’s about to take this paunchy old man for the ride of his life, then goes for the jugular. He happily tells her the name of the man who bought the clock. Then she flounces out, wearing the same red dress she wore on her first date with Q, and Quentin, keeping an eye with Eliot from the corner of the bar, knows that poor man is dying inside as he watches her walk away. 

“Harold Smargard,” she says triumphantly. “Had the fucker shipped up to his house in Vancouver.” 

“I’ve always wanted to visit Canada,” Eliot says. 

“Me too,” Julia agrees. 

So they book tickets to Canada. They find Harold Smargard. They uber it to his ultra-fancy, looks-out-on-the-water-and-holy-shit-how-much-did-this-cost house. They’re in agreement on the plan.

The man who answers the door is bearded, nondescript. He has the clock they’re looking for, but unfortunately, he says, it’s not for sale. They explain that it’s a family heirloom, passed down from their dear old grandfather. He says they must be mistaken. They insist. He says they don’t look at all alike, even for cousins. Margo gets offended and says some of them are adopted, asshole. 

He asks why, then, do they care about family heirlooms. 

He’s about to shut the door in their faces when Quentin spots something over his shoulder. “Hey,” he says, “Is that the original movie poster for the Fillory movie that never got made?” 

The man looks pleased. He lets them in, and the house, it turns out, is a wonderland of Fillory crap. Scripts for movies that never made. Every edition of every book ever printed. Toys. And in the middle, a giant clock. Eliot does a Mann Reveal. 

“Uhhhh, Q,” he says. “This guy has horns.” 

“What?” Quentin and Harold both stop nerding for a moment, Quentin confused, Harold nervous. 

“Uh, he’s got fucking horns, take a look.” Quentin does a quick Mann Reveal and holy shit, the dude’s half ram. Like a ram god. Like —

“Oh my god, you’re Ember. Or Umber. Oh my — oh my god.” Quentin drops to his knees, in the middle of a burnished concrete floor, sunshine streaming from the picture windows overlooking the Puget Sound. “We humbly beseech thee, oh great Lord of Fillory, to bestow this clock upon us, that we might enter into thy world to stop the Beast that torments it even now.” 

“Oh fuck, are you one of Jane Chatwin’s time loops, out to kill Martin Chatwin? Christ. I’ve heard about you people. You keep dying in horrible, bloody ways.”

“Are you Ember, or Umber?” Julia asks. “And why are you living in Vancouver?” 

“Umber. I struck a deal with that horrid Chatwin boy. I’m supposed to be dead. So take the clock if you want it. But I’m going to have to destroy your memories of where it came from. Can’t risk someone thinking I’ve been miraculously resurrected.” 

“Wait, you struck a deal with Martin? What’s Martin got to do with this?” 

Umber gapes at them. “You idiotic children. Haven’t you made it that far yet? Martin Chatwin’s the one you call — wait a second, let me rummage around a moment —” Quentin feels an uncomfortable invasion into his thoughts, a probing touch that makes him cringe. “The Beast. Yes. Martin Chatwin is the Beast.” 

“Can you at least let us remember that part?” Eliot asks. “Like, write it down or something?” 

“Sure,” Umber says. “Look, I’ll stick-pad a note right to the clock.” He takes a post-it from his desk and writes, in blocky all-caps, MARTIN CHATWIN IS THE BEAST. “There, will that do? Now, where to ship it?” 

“Uh, Brakebills University? Quentin Coldwater, Care of Dean Fogg?” Quentin ventures. Umber studiously writes this all down. 

“Very well, very well, I’ll have it all packed up and ready to go for you tomorrow. Now, do your best to kill Martin, will you? He’s such a fucking maniac and I’m sick of knowing he’s out there, running around loose, that chaotic son of a bitch.” He sighs. “Now, we’re done here. Let’s go outside, children. You can line up in front of your uber and we’ll do the necessary, shall we? And do try to stay still. I don’t want to erase more than is necessary.” 

They all walk out to the uber. They line up. Umber does some flashy thing with his eyes. 

And suddenly Quentin, Julia, Margo, and Eliot are saying goodbye to a nice man who doesn’t have their clock, so sorry, but who wishes them the very best of luck in finding it. They uber it back to the airport, disappointed. 

Three days later, Fogg summons Quentin to his office. “What the fuck is this?” he demands. 

It’s an enormous, ornately carved grandfather clock, scrolled over in mahogany, the same one Quentin saw at his Yale interview. Sticky-noted to the front, in block letters, is a note: MARTIN CHATWIN IS THE BEAST. 

“I don’t fucking know how it got here,” Quentin says. “But I sure am glad to see it.” 

*******

They haul the monstrosity back to the Cottage. “So what now?” Eliot asks. “Do we just open it, and like, go in?” 

“I think we should wait a little while,” Julia says. “We’ve got the clock. It’s the right clock, and we know it’s the right clock because someone saw it fit to write ‘Martin Chatwin is the Beast’ on it, which sure makes a fuck of a lot of sense after what we saw at Plover’s house.” 

“I was so sure it was Plover,” Quentin says. 

“We need magic,” Julia tells them. “Big magic. Really, really, really big magic. The kind that can at least stop the Beast and give us a chance to run until we have enough to fight it. We can’t go into Fillory without it. So Q and I need to hit the books.” 

“Can’t we just go to the library and get a book on battle magic?” Margo asks. “I mean, it’s not like it doesn’t already exist.” 

“Except it’s illegal,” Quentin tells her. “They won’t teach it, they stripped the library of all the books about it, and from what I’ve read, you have to like, meditate every day for a decade to be able to cast it, anyway. Jules and I talked. If we’re going to do this, we need to come up with our own spells.” 

“So we’re going to kill the Beast with homebrews?” Eliot asks. 

“Basically, yes,” Julia says, completely unperturbed.

“Isn’t that like, the worst idea in the history of worst ideas?”

“Do you trust us?” 

“Yes, but —” 

“Do you trust us?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then you have to trust us. We’ll teach you the spells. If you don’t think they’ll work, we won’t use them. Cross my heart and hope to die.” 

“Stick a needle in my eye,” whispers Quentin, loud enough that only Jules can hear him.

******

At four am, Julia snaps bolt upright. This snatches up half the covers and wakes Quentin, who grouses, “Bedhog,” and yanks them back over. 

“It’s Penny,” she says. 

“Huh?” he asks.

“It’s Penny. He just astral-projected into my dream. He says the button took him to this weird-ass in-between space full of fountains, like this world between worlds, where every fountain is the portal to another world? And he got chased by these maniac magicians, and he lost the Earth fountain. There’s no sun and he can’t get the Circumstances right to travel back. He needs us to find another traveler to help him.” 

“That’s what he’s been doing for a week?” 

“He said it’s only been like, a few hours. I guess time moves differently there? Anyway, we need to find another traveler. Like, asap.” 

They’re in Fogg’s office first thing in the morning. “Can’t help you,” Fogg says. 

“You have to know someone,” Julia pleads. 

“Penny’s mentor shot himself a week ago. He’s the only traveler I know of. Well, knew of. Past tense more appropriate.” Fogg sips at his whiskey. “Although. When I had the unfortunate duty of attending Alice Quinn’s funeral, I did happen to meet her parents’ polyamorous third. He’s an interdimensional traveler named Joe. Might be he could help you.” 

“Okay,” Julia says. “Can you get me Alice’s address, please? We have a condolence call to make.”


	15. Chapter 15

They decide not to tell Margo what they’re doing, and so keep Eliot in the dark, too. A portal later, they’re walking up the concrete path to a modest home outside Chicago. They agreed to dress well; Quentin’s in a suit and Julia a gray dress. A bearded man answers the doorbell. 

“Hi,” Quentin says. “We’re here to, well —” 

“We were classmates of Alice’s,” Julia explains. “I’m Julia Wicker, and this is Quentin Coldwater. We wanted to express our condolences. We also wanted to talk to your, um, friend, Joe? Dean Fogg told us he had some unique talents that might be able to help a friend of ours.” 

“Who is it, honey?” a woman’s voice shouts from inside. 

“Some friends of Alice’s who want to see Joe,” the man yells back. “Come in, come in. I’m Daniel. Welcome to our domus.” And as he opens the door, Quentin sees the house isn’t a house inside at all, but a Roman villa, complete with columns and mosaics and urns and marble everywhere. There looks to be the picked-over remains of a feast on a low table surrounded by reclining couches. 

“My specialty is Roman architectural magic,” Daniel explains. “Stephanie! We have guests!” 

A woman with a cloud of frizzed dishwater hair appears. “Charmed,” she says. “I understand you’re here to see Joe? We love Joe! He’s fantastic! What do you need?” 

“Um, our friend is trapped in this weird place full of fountains? We were hoping he could help. We’re, um, sorry about your daughter.” 

The woman sniffles a bit. The sniffle turns into a wail, then she collapses onto Julia. “I was such a wonderful mother!” she howls. “And my children were both taken so soon! Both so soon! I never had enough time with them! Alice needed a strong female role model. She was such a difficult child, and, and —” She’s weeping so hard she can’t get any more words out. Julia pats her back and exchanges a look with Quentin. 

“Whiskey? Something stronger?” Daniel asks him, ignoring his wife. He steers Quentin away from the two women. “Maybe some goat penis. Good for your virility.” 

They manage to survive on small talk for twenty minutes, Quentin asking about his architectural studies, carefully avoiding the subject of his daughter, and trying to keep pace with the man, who’s downing bourbon like Eliot on a Saturday night. Julia finally appears. “Stephanie said you could take us to meet Joe?” she says. 

“Oh, Joe! We love Joe!” Daniel says. “Come on, he’s probably in the solarium. He’s our third, you know. Where he comes from, they can switch genders at will? He’s got genitalia like a Swiss Army knife. Amazing.” 

This is explains so much about Alice, Quentin thinks. 

They come to a large room with huge picture windows. The wan Chicago sunlight filters through, gray and pale. A normal looking man’s sitting on a sectional sofa reading Good Housekeeping. Quentin doesn’t know what he expects an interdimensional traveler to look like, but it’s not this. “These things crack me up,” he says, waving the magazine at them. “Hi, Daniel. Who’ve you got there?” 

“This is Julia and Quentin. They were friends of — of —” He’s starting to crack. Julia puts her hand on her shoulder and he covers it with his, makes a “I’m being strong but really I’m crumbling inside” face. “Anyway. They want to talk to you. They think you might be able to help a friend of theirs.” 

“I’m always happy to try,” Joe says. “Sit.” 

Obediently, they sit. “Our friend Penny is trapped in this weird in-between space full of fountains,” Julia starts. 

“Yes, the Neitherlands. Go on.” 

“Okay, so you’re familiar with it,” Quentin says. 

“Of course. Every traveler is. How’d your friend get there?” 

“Um, he’s a traveler, but he’s still learning? And he used this magic button. But now he can’t find the Earth fountain to get out.” 

“Oh, that’s an easy one!” Joe says. “Simple beacon spell. You do it here, the Earth fountain lights up, your friend travels there and then home. Simple-simple.” 

“Oh, great,” Quentin says. “How hard is the spell?” 

“It depends,” he says. “As long as you two are able to climax at the same time, piece of cake. But I sense a good connection between your genitals, so it should be all right.” 

“Climax?” Julia asks hesitantly. 

“Sex magic,” Daniel explains. 

“All magic where I come from is sex magic,” Joe says matter-of-factly. “But if you need some help in that department, I’m a certified sex therapist both on my home world and here on earth.” 

“No, um, it’s just — we don’t — “ Quentin glances at Jules. He’s turning red and he knows it and that makes him turn even redder. “But the spell will work with another man, right? Say, if I called my boyfriend?” 

“Nope, this is heteronormative magic. You need one guy. One girl.” 

“Uh, this might be a problem,” Quentin says. 

“I’m glad to pinch-hit,” Joe says. He puts his hand on Quentin’s knee. “I can stand in for either one.” 

Quentin flinches back. “No! God, no. Thats - that’s not the issue. Um, could you maybe write this spell down for us? Then we could take it back to Brakebills and figure out the best way to go from there?” 

Joe nods. “Sure,” he says. “But I think you two could benefit from a good sit-down and some real therapy,” he says. “No charge. You’re so uptight,” he says to Quentin. “You both need to learn to relax.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Julia says. “Maybe you could stick your card in there, and we could come back? Another time? But we’d really like to get our friend out of that place — the Neitherlands, you called it? As soon as possible.” 

Joe nods. “I understand. It’s gotten dangerous of late, especially with all the cannibalistic locals.” He takes a pen and paper from a nearby table and begins to write. 

****

They return to Brakebills and head straight to the Cottage. Margo is up and watching America’s Top Model in a high-end robe and pajamas, but she’s down in the common room, at least. Her head rests on Eliot’s shoulder. 

“Where the hell have you two fucksticks been?” she asks. “Quentin, I’ve been fucking texting your ass all day.” 

“I left my phone here. Sorry. We had to take a portal and I forgot it.” 

“Well where the fuck did you go, then?” 

Jules and Quentin look at each other. 

“So. Um. We have some news about Penny,” Julia says. 

“What, did he reappear from the ether with the offer of free booze?” Eliot asks. 

Julia’s mouth puckers but ignores him. “Um, so he’s, like, trapped,” she says, and explains how he appeared in her dream. She tells them what they’ve been up to and where they’ve been, cringing when she has to mention Alice’s house. Quentin, sitting now on the other side of Margo, feels her clench up. He rubs her arm. 

“So basically the only way to get him back is this sex magic ritual. Which requires one girl, and one guy, who have to climax at the same time.” 

“Does all sex magic have to be so fucking hetero?” Eliot says. 

“Yeah, I asked about that?” Quentin says. “Apparently you and I won’t work.” 

“So,” Julia says, “our, um, options are limited.” 

Everyone’s silent for a second. 

“So you’re basically asking if I’m sane enough to fuck Quentin,” Margo says. 

“I wouldn’t phrase it like that,” Quentin says. 

“Because otherwise he has to fuck Julia or else Penny’s stuck in this Neitherlands place.” 

“Pretty much,” Julia says. 

“Or we bring in outside help.” 

“Do you know anyone you trust well enough to bring in?” Eliot asks. “Considering that we’d have to explain this raft of insane bullshit to them?”

“Julia could fuck Fogg,” Margo suggests. 

“I’d rather fuck Quentin,” Julia says. 

“Thanks for that,” Quentin mutters. 

“Well, nothing like the present.” Margo stands up. “Let’s go, lover boy.” She grabs Quentin’s hand. “Time to go be sex heroes.” 

“And isn’t that the best kind?” Eliot asks. 

Margo drags Quentin upstairs. He shows her a copy of the ritual. “Got it,” she says. “Okay, so we recite the High Church Latin, move into the Estonian, then do the poppers and finally have sex. During which we climax at the same time. And a beacon will appear on the Earth fountain and Penny can travel back here.” 

“Pretty much,” Quentin says. 

“All right. Let’s get to it.” She shucks off her pajamas, and Quentin can see that below her tan, she’s thinner than she should be. “Well, come on,” she says, tapping her foot. Quentin reluctantly strips. This isn’t how sex with her usually goes down. 

“Margo, are you sure —” 

“Yes, I’m fucking sure. Now we have to draw the sigil — god, where the hell is some chalk when you need it?” She finally finds some in a side drawer and etches out an involved circle on the floor. Quentin can’t help but watch her ass. When she finishes, they stand on opposite sides of it. “God, I feel like a fucking hedge. I hate all this drawing-on-the-floor bullshit. Okay.” She takes a deep breath. 

They press their palms together and recite first the Latin, then the Estonian. Afterwards, they move through a rapid series of poppers in perfect tandem. 

“That’s it,” Quentin says. 

“That’s it? We don’t have to fuck on the sigil or something?” 

“Nope.” 

“Okay.” 

“Okay.” 

They stand for a moment. “You’re beautiful,” Quentin says honestly. “You lost too much weight, but you’re still fucking stunning.” 

Her eyes are huge. He steps toward her, takes her in his arms. She’s soft and sweet in all the right places, the way she is always is. She feels thin, but she still feels like herself. “Hey,” Quentin whispers in her ear. “Make love to me. Please?” He tangles his fingers in her long hair. “I want to make love to you.” He’s kissing her ear now, softly, the way she likes, licking down the seashell curves and whispering to her how beautiful she is, how much he wants her. 

Her hands stay at her sides. 

“Put your arms around my neck and kiss me,” he begs. This isn’t going well. This isn’t going well at all. 

Obediently, she slides her arms into place and tilts her head up to his. Her lips part a bit for him. But he has to be sure. “Open your eyes,” he whispers. 

She opens them and her pupils are blown, terrorized. 

For a split second, Quentin doesn’t know if he should jump back or clutch her tighter. In the shock of it he does the first. “We can’t do this,” he says. 

“Yes we can!” she insists. 

“No, we can’t. You’re fucking terrified.” 

“I’m not terrified! Why the fuck would I be terrified?!” She’s snapping back at him like always, but her arms are wrapped around herself. 

“Because you’re fucking traumatized! A few days ago you were willing yourself into catatonia. No. I’m not having sex with you. You’re not in a condition to do this.” 

“Who the fuck are you to say when I am and am not in a condition to have sex?”

“Your boyfriend, last I checked. At least one of them. Someone with a vested interest in your mental well-being. I’m not trying to control you. I’m trying to keep you safe.” He holds his arms out warily, touches her shoulders. 

She hugs herself tighter. “Quentin,” she says. “I said I would kill her.” 

“But you didn’t mean it.” 

“It’s my fucking fault!” she screams, and a blast of cold air blows through the room. It’s suddenly about forty degrees. Margo doesn’t appear to feel it, but Quentin does. “I fucking killed her!”

“No, Margo,” Quentin says. He gathers her up close. “The Beast killed Alice.” 

She pushes him away. “I fucking killed her!” The temperature drops again. A glass shatters somewhere. 

The door blows inward. It’s Eliot. “Hi, kids,” he says calmly. “Bambi, you didn’t kill Alice. You need to take some deep breaths, darling. You need to warm it up in here, Quentin’s getting cold.” 

“I’m really fucking cold, Margo.” 

“He is really fucking cold, Bambi. It’s devastating the size of his junk. Come here,” he says. “Let Quentin and I take care of you, okay? Let us put your pajamas back on, and we’ll sit in bed, order some terrible takeout, cuddle up and watch some bad TV, okay? No bad thoughts, all right? No bad thoughts. Remember?” 

She looks at Eliot. The room slowly starts to warm. Quentin gathers up her clothes, and he and Eliot dress her. “No bad thoughts,” she finally echoes. 

“That’s right, Bambi. Remember, we decided. No bad thoughts.” He kisses her head and holds her tight. Quentin stands outside their circle for a moment, and he realizes he’s seeing something no one else has, some ritual from long ago that they used to save each other. Eliot consciously hands her to Quentin. “See? Quentin has you too, Bambi. You have both of us. You’re okay. You’re safe. No bad thoughts.” 

They lead her to bed and put on the TV. Quentin curls in next to her while Eliot goes to order some food. Before he gets back, she’s asleep. Eliot motions for him to slide out and follow him. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says, re-hinging the door quietly with his telekinesis. “Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck happened?” 

“Nothing. She was fine. And then she like, drastically not fine.” 

“Come out on the roof and smoke with me, okay?” Eliot says. They crawl out the window and prop themselves against the eaves. It’s cold, the fall wind whipping around them. Eliot sparks two Marlboro Lights and hands one to Quentin. They huddle together and suck down the smoke. 

“That’s what she used to do when she had flashbacks,” Eliot says.

“Flashbacks?” Quentin asks. 

“To being raped,” Eliot says. 

“She told me about it the first time we went out,” Quentin says “She said she was twelve.” 

“Yeah,” Eliot says. “Well, this is what used to happen. Her eyes would go big and she’d freeze a room and freak out. It usually happened when she’d been self-medicating for too long. We sort of learned how to talk each other down together. Afterwards she’d just pass the fuck out. She has to sleep it off.” 

“What the fuck did I do?” Quentin asks. His voice almost breaks. He’s terrified he touched her wrong or said or did something to trigger her. 

“Nothing. She’s fucking traumatized. She’s trying to hold it together and she fucking can’t.” He stubs out his cigarette. “I’m going to go back in and stay with her, okay? Good luck with Jules. Don’t get all weird about it. You have to do what you have to do.” 

“Please take care of her,” Quentin says. 

“I always do,” Eliot tells him. 

Eliot returns to Margo’s room. Quentin heads downstairs. Julia is sitting on the sex couch reading his copy of The World Between the Walls. She’s lost in it, so lost she hasn’t told off Todd for perching on another couch with some homework. Quentin takes a moment, stares at the planes of her face, at her strange, sharp beauty. He swallows. “I think it’s you and me, kid,” he says. 

“Yeah,” she says, and stands. “Yeah. I sort of figured that.”


	16. Chapter 16

“Holy shit,” Quentin says on the way to the library. He’s attempting to be normal. “No wonder Alice was batshit.” 

“Yeah. Her parents didn’t seem what you’d call supportive.”

Their feet crunch on the grass. It’s one of the first frosts of the year, and it’s cold tonight, the wind whispering through the trees. Quentin takes off his jacket and drops it over Jules. She gives him a half smile he can see in the slanting white moonlight. His stomach is sinking and fluttering at the same time. He feels like a stupid preteen at his first middle school dance. “Do we do this, then?” 

She looks up at him, and she’s all big, dark eyes. “If we want to bring Penny back, we do. And if it makes you feel better, I trust you, Quentin.” 

“I trust you too, Jules, it’s not about that, it’s —” 

“I love you, Quentin.” 

“I love you, too, Jules. But we both have —” 

“And sometimes saving the world means making some sacrifices. Come on.” She takes him by the hand. “I promise it won’t hurt. Let’s go be sex heroes.” 

They go to her room. It’s quieter there, further from the other students. They agree to get as smashed as they can be while still able to perform the ritual. So they start drinking. And drinking. And drinking. Quentin’s sucking down screwdrivers like a desperate man and Julia’s taking in as much as she can handle without compromising her ability to cast. They try to talk and make jokes about being kids, about Jules’s treehouse, and the time Q’s dog ate her glitter pens and pooped sparkles for three days. It doesn’t work. 

They end up putting on Explosions in the Sky and listening in the dark. “You remember when we were twelve and we practiced kissing on each other?” Julia asks. 

Quentin genuinely laughs this time. 

“Yeah. We were pretty terrible at it, weren’t we?” 

“You liked it, didn’t you?” 

“You’re asking me this more than a decade later?” he says to the ceiling. 

“Yep. A decade later. And don’t make me dose you, Coldwater, I’ve still got some of that serum left.” 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I liked it a lot.” 

They’re quiet for a moment. 

“Me too,” she says. 

The music takes over for a minute. 

“You want to try again?” she asks. Jules pulls him off his back, over onto his side. “Or we can sit under a table like before.” 

He laughs. “Okay, we’re already drunk. This isn’t working, Jules. We need some help. What if —” He swallows. “What if we combine the beacon spell with a spell that will make us more attuned to what we’re each feeling? Like, physically?” 

He can practically hear her thinking. “That could work.” She sits up and turns on a light. “Here. Let’s go downstairs and find something, whip through some metamath, make it all play together, and then try again?” 

Quentin swings his legs over the side of her bed. “Sounds good to me.” At least it postpones the inevitable. 

A hour later, they’ve found a spell that will create a kind of short-lasting psychic bond between the two of them. Nothing that will let them actually feel what the other one’s feeling, but they rummage around in the stacks some more until Julia suggests they bring in some Healing theory and make the spell work not just on the astral/psychic plane, but on the amygdala as well. This makes it tricker, but Quentin’s all in if they can figure out how to drag the magic in that direction. .”We don’t even need to combine it with the beacon spell,” he points out. “We can cast them separately.” 

They get their hands dirty, start figuring out where the magic loops and how to reloop it back to where it needs to go. It’s like laying irrigation channels, trying to make it all return to the same river but keep the water level consistent. They throw in a slight intensification spell to make sure the whole thing works like it’s supposed to. It’s a psychic spell, and neither of them has psychic tendencies, so they need some help; they raid the school supply closet at the back of the library. Together, they manage to unpick the wards where the psychic students keep the good drugs, though it takes them a while. Jules decides some run-of-the-mill magic mushrooms will do the trick, but they have to be the strong kind. 

“We’ll have to drop our wards, too, won’t we?” Quentin asks. 

“Duh,” Jules says, scooping up pretty much all the shrooms. 

Then, fairly sure they won’t blow up or switch bodies, they go up to Jules’ room, manage to eat the mushrooms without throwing them up, and cast the damn thing. It’s messy, with lots of moving parts, two casters chanting in tandem and then in harmony, flexing through poppers at the same time and then splitting off, joining again, then splitting. When the spell’s finished, they look at each other in the dull yellow glow of the dorm lamps and consciously drop their wards. For Quentin, it’s like taking down a castle wall, stone by stone. Nothing seems to have changed. 

Quentin feels like sagging. “I don’t think this worked,” he says. 

“But you think it might have,” Julia says. “We just have to give it a chance. I’m the one who thinks it didn’t work, Q.” She cocks her head. “Do you really think I’m beautiful?” she asks. 

“You really want to do this,” he marvels. “You’re not squicked out or freaking or something.” 

“You really do think I’m beautiful,” she says. 

He’s suddenly floored with the full knowledge that she does, indeed, want to fuck — no — bang — no — make love to him. Jules wants to do this. She thinks he’s enough. His best friend in the whole world, his rock, his one sure thing: she thinks he is enough. 

“Of course I do, you idiot.” 

He wonders how the fuck they even begin. 

“Well, first we have to cast the fucker,” Julia says. 

He did it once already, and that’s enough for both of them to do it. He draws the sigil on the floor. She realizes he remembers Margo taking her clothes off before they cast and, thinking it’s part of the ritual, begins to strip before he can stop her.

“No?” she says. She laughs. “Well, too late now. Off with them, Q.” 

And they’re standing naked in front of each other again, but this time, they’re looking. Quentin stares at her high, firm breasts, at the dark pucker of her nipples, the brown curls between her legs. He feels her eyes on him and knows she’s staring at his chest, familiar: patch of hair, soft trail leading down the middle to his belly button, and below, knows she’s looking at his cock. That’s making him hard. She’s looking at him, and it’s making him hard, and he’s not getting embarrassed about it, he’s only getting harder —

“Someone’s an exhibitionist.” 

“So are you.” 

“Are we going to stand here and stare at each other or are we going to cast this?” 

“I’m sort of enjoying the staring, honestly. So are you. You like it when I look at you.” 

“But we do need to cast this.” 

Quentin feels the tug of it and puts his palms against hers. They begin the simple ritual and finish it quickly. Then they’re left, again, staring, until Quentin realizes with a jolt that she’s dying for him to suck it up and touch her. She needs it to be him who get over his anxiety and doubt and panic and fear and everything else and reaches out. 

And he can do it, because he knows she thinks he’s enough. He casts Claskey’s Light Manipulation and puts down the lights. Then he rattles around a bit, hijacks the magic playlist spell he picked up from Margo, and turns on the classic rock she loves. Suddenly realizing she doesn’t want to be singing the entire time they’re having sex, Quentin tries something softer, an acoustic Band of Horses album. She nods. He steps towards her. She thinks this was a whole lot of prep work, but appreciates the effort. 

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m trying.” 

“I know,” she tells her. She takes his hand and leads him over to the bed, yanks back the covers. They leave trails, a side effect of the mushrooms. At first they lie with Quentin on the left on her on the right, but it’s the opposite of the way they usually sleep, which is weird, and they immediately switch. He’s grateful she knows that he’s not procrastinating, that he just really wants to get this right for her. For him. 

She settles herself against him, tips her chin up and presses close. He breathes her in. She smells the same way she always does, the same vanilla-and-pure-Julia scent, but this time it’s somehow different. He’s getting harder, and he knows she can feel it, and he finds that fact both incredibly mortifying and unbearably arousing at the same time. 

“That’s stupid, of course you’re getting harder, you’re supposed to.” 

“I know. But old habits die … well ... “ 

They both grin into the dark. Finally, finally, he catches her mouth in the kiss she’s been aching for. Her lips are lush and pillowy, and she takes each of his lips between hers in turn, sucking, kissing. She nips, and he gasps a little. 

“I didn’t know you liked that,” she says. She touches his face. It’s stubbled; he hasn’t slept or shaved in too long. 

“But that feels good,” she reminds him. “You know I like that.” 

He knows she does, knows she would prefer it that way, and it makes him harder. She’s rather delighted at that. She deepens the kiss, and her tongue slides into his mouth. She tastes, he realizes with a start, the same way she tasted so long ago, and he’s stunned to realize that he remembers. 

“Of course I do. You taste the same, too. How could we forget something like that?” Her legs tangle in his. He’s pressing on her thigh, which is soft and warm and smooth and perfect. 

“I don’t care if you haven’t shaved. You’re practically hairless. No, I don’t care if you haven’t shaved everywhere, either. Yes, I kind of like it that way. I’m a little tired of the Brazilian thing.” 

“Of course she has a Brazilian. Really? It gets old?” 

“Just different. Different is good. Different is you.” He kisses her, harder, because she likes this, likes this a lot: he didn’t know she was so afraid of being compared and found wanting. No no no, he thinks. You are Jules and she is Margo and you are two different things, two different people, two different slots in my life. She’s my girlfriend and I love her but you’re my ride or die and always will be. He tightens his arms around her. She needs this. She needs to know this. 

She’s starting to squirm in his arms. She wants something more. He’s terrified to touch her. He’s aching to touch her. 

“Then do it, please,” Jules begs. “Please, Q. You know it would feel so good.” 

He reaches up, cups her breast. It’s firm and round and high, the nipple puckering under his palm. 

“Yes, you like lace,” she says crossly. “But I took it off. Deal.” 

His mouth drops to the gentle curl of her ear, and he reaches up and thumbs carefully at her nipple. It tightens under his touch, and he remembers it from the trials: its smallness, how brown and high it sat. 

“You like that so much?” she asks. “You like that so much, just making my nipples hard?” 

“Of course.” 

They’ve crossed the border now, walked blind into an unknown country. She arches into him as he softly plays with her. Her body feels so good against his. He thought he knew it by now; they do, after all, share a bed so often. He knows the way her vertebrae stick out when she curls up, the curve of her ass against his back. He knows how her hair flies everywhere and ends up in his face at 3 am. But this is different. He lays her on her back, and she stares up at him in the dark. 

They love each other. Neither of them says it aloud. They don’t have to. 

He presses himself against her, and he can feel the wam heat gathering between her legs. He moves just a little bit on her. She bucks up the meet him, encouraging him, and this is Jules, for fuck’s sake, but she feels so damn good. 

“Of course it feels good, Q, what did you expect? I assumed we’d both be fairly good at this, especially with each other. And I know you’d be happy to go slow but I. Want. More.” 

And he knows what she wants. Ever-so-gently, he takes her nipple in his mouth and rakes his teeth over her. She moans and it’s not a sound he’s ever heard her make before, a low sound, deep in the throat, half a hum. He does it again, and again, then switches breasts and uses a free hand to pinch at her other wet nipple. She’s arching against him, rubbing herself shamelessly against his cock. She’s unfolding on him, getting wet. 

“I know you want to reach down and feel,” she says, “but not yet.” 

She knows that then he’s slowing down, that he needs to, and she lets him. He wants to feel her and she wants to give him that chance. He lays next to her. His hands skate over her side, down the length of her, where her waist narrows then widens into hip. He feels the skin there, the kitten-belly softness of it against his thumbs. “I’ve never touched you there,” he says wonderingly. “This part. Right here.” 

“Oh god Q, you feel good,” she breathes. “Oh god.” Because he’s hard, ridiculously hard, against the soft heat between her legs. 

He moves against her, gently, gently. The friction is delicious, enough to satisfy, for now, the desperate need building in him. Her hands are moving through his hair; she’s pushing against him, grinding harder on him. He’s content to go slow, but she’s pushing him. She wants him to talk to her. She loves, he realizes with a jolt, to be talked into this, slowly, in a low, gentle voice. 

“I don’t care if I know what you’re going to say. I want to hear you say it.” 

He leans back up to the delicate curve of her ear, breathes on it. She shivers. “I want to fuck you,” he says. “I want to make love to you. For one fucking night of our lives, I want to have you.” 

“That’s — that’s better.” Her breath hitches and Quentin realizes, with a start, that this is what she really, really wants. 

He moves her onto her back and begins draws slow circles on her belly. This is why she never wears a bikini, he realizes with a jolt, because her belly is so sensitive to this. “I never touched you here before,” he says. “You’re so soft, Jules.” He leans over, lazily kisses her while his hand traces slow patterns over her skin. He’s pressed up against her thigh now, and he knows she can feel him hard against her and she loves it. He’s starting to drip a bit, just enough to dot the front of his shorts. She likes that part, too. She likes to feel him dripping for her. 

He’s losing patience. He wants to feel her hand on him. But she wants him to tell her that. 

“Please touch me,” he begs. “No, don’t make me say it. You know what I mean. Please, Jules. Fine. Please touch my cock.” 

Her hand is gentle as it closes around him, and he gasps. She knows exactly how to touch him. It’s as if he’s doing it himself but better, better, a thousand times better. 

“I certainly hope so,” she says. She strokes up and down his shaft the way he likes, then her fingers find the sensitive spot just behind his head, underneath, still wet from her. She’s incredibly aroused by that, and by the precum he’s dripping. 

“No, I’m not going to make you come, don’t worry about that.” 

Now she’s ready for him. More than ready. Her legs are parting for him and she wants his fingers in her. But not yet. 

“Q,” she begs. 

“No,” he says. “Shhh.” 

His fingers move down, down, down to the tops of her thighs. “I’ve never touched you here, either,” he says. He strokes, farther and farther inward. Her legs part further for him. “I’ve definitely never touched you here. I think this is the softest part yet.” And it is, the insides of her thighs are velvet-soft and smooth. His thumb brushes closer to her center. She whimpers. He knows without touching her that she’s wet all over, that she’s already spread open and swollen and ready for him. His fingers finally reach her and she’s perfection, soft and slick. She’s pushing him to slide his finger inside her — he can tell without feeling she only needs one of them — but instead he explores, teases. She likes her clit stroked softly but it gets oversensitive quickly and he has to be careful with her. 

“If you want to,” she says. “But only if I get to.” 

He flips around so he’s lying with his head next to her opening. He can go softer with his tongue and she tenses on it, then relaxes and arches up into it. There’s a spot she wants him to hit, higher up, that will roll her clit under the hood. He parts her a little bit with his fingers and finds it. She gasps. But his cock is close to her, and he knows she knows how much she wants him to take it in her mouth. He’s shocked to realize she can deep throat him if she wants. 

“No?” she asks. She licks his head like a lollipop. “Are you sure? Okay, okay, fine. I get it. No, I don’t want to fuck up the ritual either.” 

He goes back to gently licking and she tenses on him again. She’s dying for him to fuck her. She wants him, at least, to feel how much she wants it. He can’t bear to tease her any longer and slips one finger inside her entrance. She moans again, bucks and twists on it. 

He stops, flips back up to her mouth. She wants to kiss him again, her own seawater taste on his tongue. So unbearably hot. He’s desperate to fuck her. 

“No. Make love to me. We owe each other that.” 

He looks at her in the dark, her hair tangled, her body tense with want. He slides a finger back inside and pets her g-spot. She’s going to come in a warm rush all over his cock, he knows, and the thought turns him on so much. He gets up and straddles her. On her back, she casts the standard contraception spell. Must have learned it from Margo, or maybe looked it up herself. He’s aching with want. 

“Then do it, Q,” she says simply. “Please?” She moves against his head. “Please?” She moves a little more. He slips a bit inside her. She’s tight, tight, tight and wet and hot around him. 

“I know you won’t last.” 

“That’s okay. You won’t either.” He shimmies in her experimentally, and she gasps. She’s clutching at him with all her muscles down there and it’s ridiculous how hard she can hold him. 

“Yeah, I could probably make you come without either of us moving, but where’s the fun in that?” She raises her hips and thrusts up at him. He groans and meets her, then lies flat on top of her, knowing he’s not hurting her, not suffocating her, catches her mouth in his and moves inside her. Softly at first, then harder, harder, harder until they’re both thrusting up at each other, her nails on his back (she knows he loves nails on his back), lips frantic on each other, hands tangled in each other’s hair, and —

They’re coming, both of them, him thrust deep inside her, her digging her hands into his ass and holding him there while she spasms around him, that warm rush that makes him come even harder, and she’s calling out his name, actually yelling, “Oh my god, Q, oh my god, Q, oh my god, my Q, Quentin —” 

And suddenly, there’s Penny. 

“What the fuck are you doing with my girl, Swiftie?” 

“We, uh, had to — it’s a long —” 

“Penny,” Julia warns. “I can explain this.” 

“Yeah, well, neither of you had to enjoy it so fucking much!”

Reluctantly, reluctantly, because he knows he’ll never have a chance like this again, Quentin slides off Julia. And when he does, Penny’s fist connects with his face. 

“Is this the way you treat the guy who brought you back from the Neitherlands, you asshole?” Julia shouts at him. “This was literally the only way to do it!”

“Well why couldn’t — oh. I’m sorry, Quentin. That sucks. Is she okay? Then get up there and take care of her, dipshit!” 

Suddenly sick of being in everyone else’s head, Quentin throws his clothes on and leaves Julia with Penny. He feels ill. This has been one of the most profound things to ever happen to him, and Penny had to drop in and ruin the fuck out of it. Which was of course the point, but that doesn’t make it any better and now Julia is with him instead and he’s stunned to find himself viscerally, rabidly jealous. 

The thought floats back that of course he is, that she is too, but he can’t tell if it’s really her or just his imagination, and he trudges, instead, to his own room. Where he finally, finally fucking sleeps. Alone. 

He dreams of moths.


	17. Chapter 17

“So the button was a bust, basically,” Quentin says. 

They’re all sitting in the common room of the Cottage, sprawled on the battered couches, drinking something strong Eliot’s whipped up. The button’s on the table in front of them, in a glass case. 

“Yeah, a real fucking big one,” Penny says. “Saying the natives are unfriendly is a really big fucking understatement, and I have no idea how to get to Fillory from there. Like, fucking none. We’d have to just try fountains randomly until we hit on the right one or something.” 

“Well, that idea’s fucked,” Margo says. 

They all look at the clock in the corner. 

“So you fucking found it,” Penny says. 

“Somehow,” Quentin tells him. “We have no idea how. We think whoever gave it to us wiped our memories, but they did a really good job of it because Jules and I can’t find the patch.” 

“So let’s try it out,” Penny says. 

“We can’t go into Fillory without some serious magic,” Julia says. “What if we run into the Beast?” 

“And where the fuck are we supposed to get that?” Penny asks. “Look, it’s simple. I haven’t told you guys this, but over the summer, I got these sigils.” He holds out his hands and shows them tattoos on his knuckles. “It lets me take people with me when I travel. I haven’t really used it because I’m working on my aim. But if I can get into Fillory, I can use the girl’s voice to hone in on her, travel there, get her and the old man out, travel back to where the clock lets me out, and get them both back here to Earth and away from the Beast.” 

“Then why can’t you just like, travel to Fillory?” Quentin asks. 

“Because I’ve never fucking been there, I don’t know the Circumstances, and my aim might be fucking off!” Penny says. “You want me to fuck that up and have us end up — I don’t know — in some two-dimensional world or some shit?” 

“Didn’t that happen to Meg in A Wrinkle in Time?” Margo asks. 

“Well, you pulled that out of the dark reaches of childhood,” Eliot says, but you can tell he’s mildly impressed. Margo hits him on the shoulder. 

“Yeah, it did,” Julia says. “And no, we definitely don’t want that to happen.” 

“And isn’t saving this girl really going to piss the Beast off?” Quentin asks. 

“Yeah, well, do we have a fucking choice?” 

“Yes,” Quentin, Eliot, and Margo say at once. 

“All right. Let’s take a vote,” Margo says. “Raise your hand if you think we should save this girl.” Julia and Penny raise their hands. “Raise your hands if you think we should wait til we have much better magic and then maybe save this girl.” She, Quentin, and Eliot raise their hands. 

“Asked and answered,” Eliot says. “No dashing rescue mission. Sorry, my skin is worth more than that. So now we have to figure out some spells to at least by us some time against the Beast.” 

“Okay, so I’ve been thinking about that,” Quentin says. “We each have our specialties. Eliot, you’re telekinetic. Margo, you’re all cold-kinetic.” 

“Cryokinetic,” she says dryly. 

“Penny, you’re a traveler.” 

“And psychic, Swiftie.” 

“Yeah, well, how do we know that’s not going to go to shit if you’re in front of the Beast?” 

“We don’t.” 

“Exactly. So let’s not count on it. Basically, we need to engineer spells that make our strengths super-powerful. Like, Margo doesn’t just freeze a pool of water. She freezes things on a cellular level so they can’t move then shatters flesh.” 

“Oh, fuck that mess, dude,” Eliot says. “I’ll be sure to wear one of my less-favorite shirts for this excursion.” 

“Eliot isn’t just telekinetic. He could fuck with thing on a gravitational level and tear them apart molecule by molecule.”

“Again, messy,” Eliot says. “Yet admittedly effective. What about you and Julia?” 

They glance at each other. “I haven’t gotten that far yet,” Quentin says. “But we have to find some spells we can rig up to make some big magic. Probably cooperative shit to double their power. Big shit. Big power.” 

“How do we know none of this is going to make us niffin out?” Penny asks. “And what about me?” 

“Because if we feel it going, we pull out,” Quentin says. “Obviously we’ll practice this shit before we go to Fillory. And what about you? You flash in and out and throw spells. Probably highly intensified variations of Chillinger’s Bird Repellent.” 

“You’re going to send me against the Beast with Chillinger’s fucking Bird Repellent?” Penny demands. “Fuck this noise. I’m out.” He stands up. 

Julia puts her hand on his shoulder. Quentin feels a stab of jealousy he quickly stuffs. “Not Chillinger’s Bird Repellent. That’s the spell we use as a starting point. By the time we finish it’ll basically be battle magic you won’t need to meditate for ten years to throw.” 

Penny reluctantly sits back down. “All right. But for the record, I don’t agree with not rescuing this girl now, and if I don’t trust these fucking homebrews you and Swiftie come up with, I’m out. Got it?” 

“Got it,” Julia says. “But you will trust us. We know how to twist magic. Q and I can do it.” She smiles at him crookedly. He smiles back. “We’ve been winning shit since we tied the first-grade spelling bee.”

“You cried because you didn’t win the whole thing,” Quentin says. He grins. 

“So did you,” she shoots back, but she’s smiling. 

“Our moms took us out for ice cream,” he remembers. “We both got rainbow sprinkles.” 

“Oh my god, could you two get any more pathetic?” Penny demands. “How’s that black eye feel, Swiftie?” 

“Feel good not being chased by crazed cannibals, Seasonably Inappropriate Scarf Man?” Quentin asks. 

“Eh, that’s a little long to stick,” Eliot says. 

“Yeah, you need to do better than that, Q,” Margo agrees. “Try ‘Motley Crue motherfucker.’” 

“If we keep fighting, we’ll all end up dead,” Julia warns. “So shut the fuck up, all of you. Q, let’s get started on this tomorrow. I think we all need a night?” 

“I think that’s a good fucking idea,” Penny says. “Now watch this shit. C’mere, Jules.” He wraps her in his arms. “Peace out, assholes.” He and Julia flash out. 

“You have to admit that was an impressive exit,” Eliot says. 

Quentin shrugs. 

“I know you hate him, but we need his fashion-deficient ass, so try to cool it down,” Eliot tells him. “I’m going to go start some decent fucking dinner for us. We all need to eat some real food. Like oxtail over grits. Okay? I’ll be in the kitchen should either of you lazy asses decide to help me.” 

“Tell Todd he can sous-chef if he eats in his room,” Margo suggests. 

“Then I have to deal with Todd,” Eliot points out. 

“Truth,” Margo says. Eliot disappears. She turns to Quentin. They’re sitting next to each other on the sex couch, thighs next to each other and it’s felt so good, but he’s known what’s coming and he’s been dreading it. “So how did it go with Julia?” 

“Um,” he says. He can’t lie to her and won’t lie to her but he doesn’t want to tell her the truth, either. His face starts to burn. “It was so awkward we had to cast a spell to give us a temporary psychic bond.” 

“And?” 

“And. Um. Maybe you and I should try it. I remembered the spell on purpose for us. I even grabbed some of the mushrooms we need to cast it.” 

“That good, huh?” she says, and there’s an edge to it. 

“It certainly wasn’t bad, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

“I want you to say it was awful. I want you to say it was the worst sex of your fucking life, asshole.” 

“Margo.” 

“She’s your best fucking friend,” Margo says. “How the fuck can I possibly compete with that? You’ve known her since kindergarten, for god’s sake. You sleep in her bed when you’re not in mine, you fucking sleep slut. You’d always pick her over me.” 

“It’s not like that. It’s apples and oranges. No, more like shoes and tomatoes. Something on two completely different planes of existence.” 

“Except now it’s not, Quentin. It was and now it’s not, fuckstick.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because you fucked her, dipshit.” 

He sighs. “I had to. It wasn’t like, this fucking choice I made. I didn’t get drunk and decide to cheat on you, Margo. I tried with you first. I wanted to do this with you.”

She doesn’t say anything. Her teeth are gritted and her lips are pressed tight together. 

“Look. Eliot’s busy cooking. Come upstairs with me. I want to show you something.” He takes her hand. 

She jerks it away. “I don’t want to fuck you, dumbass.” 

“I just want you to cast this with me, okay? Just cast it. It doesn’t do anything but give us a temporary psychic bond and whatever happens after that happens, okay? At least I’ll know how fucking mad you are.” 

He can see her thinking. “Fine. But only because then you’ll know how fucking pissed I am, dickwad.” 

They go up to her room. He teaches her the spell; they eat the shrooms; he leads her through the messy casting. They stand and stare at each other.

“You have to drop your wards,” Quentin says. “The spell won’t work unless you don’t.” He drops his own. 

He feels hers go. 

Quentin’s slammed by a sense of grief and rage and anger and pain all roiled together. He doubles over. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he manages. 

“You really don’t think there was any other way?” she asks. Her voice is calm. 

“No,” he says. He’s close to tears. 

“You’re not in love with her.” 

“No,” he chokes. “How do you feel like this and not fly apart?” 

“God, even when you’re in my head, you’re being an asshole. No, I’m not going to say I’m sorry. No, I’m not going to take it back. You’re an asshole sometimes Quentin, and I know you know you’re an asshole sometimes, and you need to take it out and fucking look at it.”

He’s crying. 

“Pussy up, bitch. I’d say cock up but we all know which is tougher.” She pauses. “Yeah, well, you’d lose your shit sometimes too if you carried that around. Yes I can fucking cast! You dipshit! How dare you! Of course I can fucking cast!” The room drops to freezing in an instant. The glass of water sitting on her dresser shatters when it expands. 

“Yeah, well, love doesn’t make it all fucking better. You’re damn right I have every right to be angry at you! You fucked someone else!” 

The misery and anger is coming at Quentin in waves. He wants to throw up. “I’m sorry you had to sit here and know it was going on,” he manages. “Yes, I know that must have been one of the worst parts, waking up and knowing it was happening. No, love doesn’t work that way and you know it! If it does it’s cheap and it’s stupid and it’s not real. No, Eliot doesn’t feel that way. He told me he didn’t. He said I had to do what I had to. 

“Well yeah I get that it’s fucking different! But it’s not! Who did I go with tonight? Who am I standing her screaming at? Why would I fucking bother?”

They both sag down onto the bed. “Yeah, at least Eliot didn’t interrupt this one,” Margo agrees quietly. The room temperature rises again. 

“Uh-huh, he knew we needed it.” The emotions are receding. They’re still there, but they’re background now, a horrible cacophony, but lessening. Finally, finally, she’s ready, but she needs him to make the first gesture. He puts his arms around her. She doesn’t flinch away. He knew she wouldn’t. He holds her hard, the way she needs held right now, lips on her forehead, rocking her gently back and forth. He makes quiet shh’ing noises which he never realized calmed her so much. 

She wants to lie down. She likes to be the little spoon. He never knew how much. 

“Eliot will kill me if I call you that,” he says. “No way, baby.” Pause. “Good, I’m glad we can agree on that one, bitch.” He kisses the back of her neck. “You beautiful bitch. You perfect, perfect, perfect bitch.” 

She’s finally molded into him, and they’re both drowsing when Eliot bangs in. “Dinner, bitches,” he says. 

“She’s not hungry,” Quentin tells him. “No, I’m not leaving you to go eat. Eliot can heat it up later. Yes, he’ll be huffy. I don’t give a fuck.” 

“Yes, I am huffy. Who I am supposed to feed now, Todd? And what’s with completing her sentences?” 

“Temporary psychic bond,” they say at the same time. 

“Ooooh, that’s a fun one,” Eliot says. “Teach it to me.” 

“She wants to know about dinner but she doesn’t want to bother talking,” Quentin says. 

“Dinner can wait until later or someone will come by and eat it. This is more interesting.” 

“I know you don’t want me to get up but I have to so I can teach Eliot the spell,” he says. 

“Okay. Walk me through this baby.” 

He and Eliot stand. He ignores Margo’s silent whining to get back in bed with her. “I don’t know if you have to cast this with her too or if the effect will just double,” he warns. But he walks Eliot through the spell first; gives him some shrooms, then they cast it together. 

“Now you drop your wards,” Quentin says. It takes Eliot a moment, but then Q feels the rush of them breaking. 

“You’re actually in love with me,” Eliot says wonderingly. 

“You’re actually in love with me,” Quentin echoes. 

“Are you two going to do this shit all night?” Margo asks. “Yes, I know you’re both that insecure. I’m fucking dating you both. No, I didn’t think it was this fucking bad, Jesus.” 

“Yeah. I guess it does work three ways,” Eliot says. 

“Bandwagon’s a shit word for it,” Quentin notes. “No, so is train. Eliot, do you really want to know? Just rummage around and find the answer then, but it’s going to piss the shit out of Margo. Of course it was fucking good, we were psychically bonded, Jesus! What do you fucking think?!”

“How could you think that?!” Eliot demands. “How could you possibly think either of us would be, like, 100% totally okay that happening? She’s your best friend. Since kindergarten. How can we ever compete with that?” 

“Well of course he said that!” Margo snaps. “What the fuck else was he supposed to say, ‘Leave Penny in magic fountain land because I’m too jealous to deal?’” 

“Of course I believed him!” Quentin snaps right back. “That’s what he told me. And stop it. I thought we already dealt with this. Like I said before, where the fuck am I?” 

“You’d bother because you’re a codependent jackass,” Eliot says. “And your codependent bestie is currently off banging Motley Crue Motherfucker. OKAY YES I KNOW YOU LOVE ME JESUS! I’m allowed to be jealous! You had like, amazing sex without me or Bambi!”

“No we don’t care if it was because of some stupid mind meld you had to do because you were too embarrassed to do it in the first place!” Margo shrieks at him. 

“And yes, you are codependent, Quentin. You’re a poster child for codependency.” 

“Well, it’s a little late to take the spell back, isn’t it, bitch?” Margo snarks. “Fine. Go if you want to. I’m not fucking stopping you.” She pauses. “No, Eliot, he’s being an asshole! I don’t care! Yes I can feel what’s coming off him and I don’t care!”

“Then you’re being a cunt, Bambi,” Eliot says calmly. “He’s about to break into tears.” Pause. “Yeah, well, you were a theater major. Not the same.” 

Quentin can feel Eliot whiplashing from rage to understanding and back to rage again. Margo won’t stop throwing all her emotions at both of them. He just wants to walk out. He just wants to go. He can’t deal with this anymore. He puts his hands on both sides of his head. 

“Then get out,” Margo says with a deliberately icy calm. “We don’t need you, you know.” 

But skating underneath, deep underneath, so deep he can barely make it out: if you go it means you don’t love me. 

He furrows his brow and looks at Eliot. Can Eliot make that out, too? Jules didn’t hide anything from him. She wasn’t trying to. Eliot doesn’t look at him. He seems to be concentrating on some other frequency. 

“I’m not trying to push you away!” Margo shouts at Quentin. “I’m not trying to punish you, either.” 

“Liar,” Eliot says. “You want him to bleed for this. Happy now, Bambi?” 

“How dare you?” she bites off. “I don’t care what we agreed, Eliot! It hurts!”

Quentin realizes they agreed not to hold Julia against him. Eliot’s trying hard to stick to it and Margo doesn’t give a fuck. He doesn’t know where he stands with Jules and now these two won’t stop and he can’t handle it anymore. He walks out. On the way, he snatches the cigarettes from Eliot’s back pocket without a word. He doesn’t know how far he has to go before he can’t hear them anymore but he’s going to get there.

Turns out it’s just the roof of the Cottage. He lights the cigarette with a spark. It’s freezing, but he backs up against the wall and sucks the smoke like oxygen. 

“Yeah, I know I took your cigarettes, asshole, I didn’t have my own,” Quentin says as Eliot sticks his head out the window. “Yeah. I know you love me. I love you too. That’s why this sucks so bad. It’s like getting punched —” 

“Over and over again.” Eliot crawls out and sits next to him. 

“Don’t care if you didn’t mean it. Here, fine, they’re fucking yours anyway.” Quentin throws the pack at him. 

Eliot just puts an arm over Quentin’s shoulders. He pulls him close. He doesn’t speak. He just lets Quentin feel it: how scared he was that Quentin would leave them for Julia. How scared he still is. How Margo’s absolutely out of her mind with terror. That they’re both that scared because they love him. 

Desperately, he wants Eliot to tell him everything will be all right. 

HIs voice is ragged. It’s tired. “It’ll be all right, Q,” he says. He takes the cigarette from Quentin’s hand, tips his face up, and kisses him. 

And it’s kissing Eliot again, the same way kissing Eliot is always kissing Eliot: that wonderful stubble against his cheek, the soft lips, the way Eliot sort of takes over —

“Do I take over?” 

“Well, you sort of do. Like, if we were dancing, you’d definitely be leading. If that makes any sense. Do you really think I kiss that well?” 

“Mmm-hmm.” 

“Like that well?” 

“Quentin, you can hear my thoughts. Do you really need multiple verbal confirmations?”

“If you can both play nice, I’ll come back down. No, I don’t care if I sound like a sulky child!”

She didn’t think he would come back. It wasn’t that Eliot followed him. She sent Eliot to get him. Eliot knew he would come back eventually. She didn’t. Her relief is like a water rushing over him when he follows El into the room. She wants him so badly. She’s sitting up, her hair tangled, her eyes red but makeup still intact —

“It’s called setting spray, Coldwater,” she says dryly. 

Eliot’s pushing him but he doesn’t need pushed and mentally, he swats him out of the way. Quentin crosses the room and holds her, and holds her, and holds her. She’s mad that he left but so, so relieved he came back. “I know you had to go,” she says. “But it still felt like you were leaving us.” 

When she says us she means me. 

He gives her what she wants. He takes her face in both of his hands and kisses her softly. He didn’t know she liked that so much. He strokes her hair. She likes that even more. She settles into him and lets him kiss her gently, pet her face, think sweet things about how beautiful she is and how much he loves kissing her and how good her lips feel on his, how much he loves feeling her in his arms. 

“Oh my god, you two are pathetic,” Eliot says from across the room. He’s leaning on the dresser smoking a cigarette. “Bambi. You are not on the cover of a romance novel and Q is decidedly not Fabio. I mean, the pec situation alone.” 

He throws his hands up in the air. “Fine, fine. Both of you. I’ll shut the fuck up then, god. Can we at least go drink? This emotional whiplash is giving me some serious mental vertigo.” He waits. “Well fine, then, I’ll bring it up from downstairs! You two better be ready to expand this party when I get back.” He disappears. 

Margo and Quentin start laughing. They rest their foreheads together and laugh until something subtle shifts, Quentin doesn’t know how, and they’re kissing again. But this time it’s a different kind of kissing. The wanting kind, not the comforting kind. 

“Of course you think I’m beautiful,” she says. “I’m fucking gorgeous. And yes I’m wearing lace and yes it’s for you and yes you can look but not. yet.” 

Eliot bangs back in with a handle of vodka for Q and Margo and some whiskey for himself. “You started without me,” he pouts. “No, I don’t care whose idea it was. You’re equally to blame.” He pours them all shots. They down them. He pours three more. All three of them take them like frat boys. Quentin wonders — 

“Learned it at college.” Margo smirks. “I didn’t just walk out of UCLA with a 4.0.” She stretches out on the bed. Her dress rucks up. The lace is black. 

“I know, Q,” she says. “That’s why I wore it. You think Eliot gives a shit? Okay, okay, other than basic aesthetics, I’ll grant you that, darling.” 

Eliot’s staring at her tits. Quentin had no idea he loves breasts so much. I mean, he knows Eliot likes tits, but —

“Everyone loves tits, Quentin,” Eliot says. “Especially really, really, really nice tits. Especially high, perfect, round tits with nipples that — She wants to hear it. Why the fuck do you think I’m saying it?” 

Margo smiles. “I like what Quentin’s thinking better,” she says. 

“Why?” Eliot demands. 

“Because he wants to suck on them.” 

“I was getting there!”

“You were taking your fucking time.” 

“Hey, you can’t call dibs on that!” Quentin says, mildly outraged. 

“I just did,” Eliot says. He stretches out next to Margo, pulls her dress down. “I’m not taking her fucking bra off, you lingerie slut, don’t freak out.”

Margo huffs. “You’re going to fuck up the neckline.” She sits up. Eliot obediently unzips her and pulls the dress off. He tosses it. He lays her back, pinches her nipple enough to make her gasp, then lowers his mouth and sucks through the lace. 

“Yes, there’s enough room for you, Quentin, you don’t have to stand there and get hard,” Margo says. Q fairly scrambles onto the bed and claims her other side. He props himself on one arm and blows gently on her breast. She loves this game. He watches her nipple draw and pucker with the cold. He rubs it with his thumb. 

“I didn’t know you liked the lace too,” he says. 

“Of course I do, jackass. It feels good when you touch me through it.” 

He and Eliot decide together that after everything, this needs to be about her. They can have each other later. Both of them can hear protest radiating off Margo but they ignore her, and it stops once Quentin leans down and takes her nipple in his mouth. It’s already puckered from his breath and he sucks on it, flicks it with his tongue, then finally nips gently. She tangles her hands in his hair and hums contentedly, both her boys exactly where she wants them. 

Eliot moves up to kiss her. She opens her mouth for him and Quentin knows for once how much she adores kissing him, just as much as he does and for the same reasons: the stubble against her cheeks; his soft, gentle lips; the way he takes the lead; his tendency to periodically nip at her lower lip. 

“Glad to know you both think I’m a stellar kisser,” Eliot says. “Should I add that to the resume?” 

As Eliot kisses upward, Quentin kisses down, down, down. Over her bare belly, the flat perfect plane of it, tanned and taut. He strokes at her sides; thumbs caressing over her soft skin. He’s not kidding this time. This lace is not coming off her until it’s soaked through. 

She loves that idea. She adores that she can hear him thinking it, that he likes playing with her body so much. Her legs are already parting. He shushes her as he pets her thighs in long strokes. He doesn’t need to; she knows what he’s thinking, but she likes to hear him anyway. Eliot’s still got her mouth; he’s gently twisting her nipples between his thumb and forefinger, still with his full palm against her breast. Quentin can feel Eliot getting hard, and Eliot can feel him getting hard, and it’s arousing both of them even further. He knows Margo is starting to get wet, deep inside, and if he were to slide a finger inside her he’d feel it. 

Just the idea of it sends her bucking underneath him, begging with her body and her mind while she keeps kissing Eliot even though she knows Quentin is telling her not yet, not yet. She wants him to see how much she wants it. Quentin gets even harder. His mouth reaches the edge of that black lace and dips down. She wants him to lick her. She wants sucked on. But she knows he won’t and it’s driving her crazy. Eliot’s drawing both her nipples into tight, stiff peaks, pinching them hard now, tongue exploring her mouth. 

Quentin nuzzles in between her legs. She smells amazing, the seawater scent of a woman begging to be touched. He takes time to enjoy that, to nudge himself against her, to rub his lips against hers. She’s starting to open for him. But he’s careful not lick or kiss or do anything of the things she really wants. 

“Quentin, you’re so mean,” Eliot says admiringly. 

“No, you better not come down here,” Quentin warns. “This is mine. You called dibs, remember? So am I.” 

“Then stop tormenting her. I know you’re enjoying it. I know you think it’s fun. Really? You’re really going to make her soak those before you take them off?” 

“Mmm-hmm.” Quentin hums against her. She gasps a little. He brings a hand up, cups her ass and lifts it a bit. 

“I haven’t even been working out, thank you,” Margo manages. “It is fantastic. Oh god, so is that.” Quentin’s slid a finger down and began massaging her perfect, puckered circle. He pets softly, uses his thumb to stroke at her through the lace. His other fingers caress the insides of her thighs. He wants to open her up before he sees her. 

“You’re such a voyeur, Quentin.” 

“Yes, you’re also an exhibitionist,” Eliot adds. “If you stripped and just stood there while I looked at you, you’d — yeah. Pretty much exactly that.” 

But he mostly ignores Eliot. He’s thinking of her instead. He begins, in response to her begging, to use his lips on her: nuzzling them into her, using them to gently tease her open. He keeps massaging her ass. The black lace begins to dampen against his mouth and he can’t resist; his tongue darts out and tastes her. She arches and moans and redoubles her begging, and he can’t help but laugh into her. 

“Do you really think so?” She stops kissing Eliot for a moment. 

“You know I do. Fantastic.” He licks again, right at her center, where the wetness is starting the gather through the lace. “Like the ocean.” 

She settles back again, content. Unwilling to torment her any more, he slides the lace sideways. He knows what she wants, exactly what she wants. He thrusts his tongue inside her and she gasps. Then he begins to touch her the way she likes, the slow circles at her entrance, so excruciatingly sensitive. She hums with pleasure and spreads her legs wider for him. 

“Not yet,” he scolds her. “Be patient.” 

“Yes, we know it’s not your strong point, Bambi,” Eliot tells her. 

Quentin finally, finally slides the lace off her. She sighs. Eliot snaps his fingers and her bra unhooks. “You’re welcome,” he says to Quentin. He tosses the bra at him. Q bats it away. 

“Oh hush, we’re not hurting your precious lingerie,” Eliot says. “You and Q can play with it later. Well, no, it’s mostly your game and his game and I play along. Yes, I still think you’re fabulously gorgeous with it and without it. Can we continue now?” She doesn’t bother to speak, he just knows to keep kissing her. But she wants something else — Q can feel her begging Eliot for it. He teases her for a minute, palms both her breasts, lets her know how spectacular they are. She doesn’t care right now, she’s making begging sounds and it’s hard to tell what they can hear and what’s in their heads. Finally he dips down and sucks her bare breast. Her fingers tangle in his hair and she makes a pleased purring sound in her throat. She squirms her hips, trying for contact with Quentin. 

“No, I like watching,” Q tells her. “Sorry not sorry. Eliot likes when I watch, too.” In fact he can see Eliot hard through his immaculate khakis and it’s maddening. 

“Down, Q,” Eliot murmurs. “And don’t be a little bitch about it. You can have it later.” 

She’s basically ordering him to lick her and he ignores her, just keeps watching Eliot play with her tits. He slips the tip of a finger inside her. Her back is arched and she’s so gorgeous lying taut between the two of them, begging them both. She bucks at him. “I know,” he says, and slides the rest of it inside, crooks it so it nestles against her g-spot. She moves on him, making him fuck her with his finger. He adds another. “I know that’s what you want, and maybe you can have it later. If you can last that long.” He leans down, eyes still on her and Eliot, and begins moving his tongue lazily through her folds. She wants him right there; he makes sure he’s over there instead. 

“I know, it’s so much fun to torment someone when you know what they’re thinking,” Quentin tells her, almost gleefully. “I’d say fuck you too, but maybe, maybe not. Oh, all right.” He finally finds her clit and rolls it under his tongue. She arches into him and moans. 

“No, you won’t last,” Quentin says. “But you don’t really want to.” He slips his tongue just under her hood and licks at it with the flat of his tongue. She goes tense; her hips start rocking and trembling. 

“That’s it,” Eliot encourages. Neither of them realized how much she likes to be talked through this, how much she wants them to tell her to come. Quentin finally begins strokes her g-spot in earnest, matching it the rhythm of his mouth. She’s unfolded for him, slicked, his face wet with her. She loves being this wet. She loves when they make her this wet, he realizes with a start, that just the sheer fact of being this soaked feeling good. It makes him harder. He’s starting to ache now. 

“Oh, poor baby,” Eliot snarks. 

“You’ll fucking ache when I’m done with you,” Q tells him, because Eliot wants him to. Eliot, he’s realizing, wants him to say all sorts of things. His free hand pets that soft spot where Margo’s leg meets her hip meets her belly. He turns his attention back to her. She starts to shake again. “There you go, Bambi,” Eliot encourages. “Come for us.” Quentin’s tongue darts on her, traces shapes against her clit. She thrusts her hips up and clenches his fingers hard. He slides another inside her and presses hard on her g-spot. Then he licks, licks, licks, catches her clit up from below, flicks at it with his tongue while she trembles on the edge. Quentin thinks how good it’s going to feel when she comes. 

And she does: a hard clench on his fingers, rippling up from her entrance, fluttering on him; a warm rush against his face. He presses hard on her clit, moves his tongue slowly against her like she wants (like she does herself, he realizes), and she cries out, jerks against him, bucks again and again on his tongue and fingers. Eliot’s holding her tightly. Her orgasm slows, drifts into a hard spasm every few seconds as Quentin lets go then presses on her again. Finally she’s boneless, breathing hard, curled into Eliot. 

“Yeah, I told you it’s a good fucking spell,” Quentin tells her. “I told you I remembered it for us on purpose.” 

“You really didn’t believe women ejaculated? You misogynist,” she manages. 

“He was probably doing it wrong,” Eliot says, as Quentin wipes his face dry. 

He and Eliot are staring at each other. There’s a bulge in Eliot’s khakis; Quentin feels himself stiffening further. “Are you just going to stand there dressed and just get hard?” Margo says with her eyes shut. Eliot lets her go, stands up and approaches Quentin. 

“I love you,” Quentin whispers in his ear, because Eliot wants to hear it, over and over and over. Now that he’s concentrating only on him, he’s shocked to feel how hurt he is, how scared. “I love you,” he says again. He cups Eliot’s face in his hands, brushes the curls off his forehead. “I love you.” 

Eliot’s the tall one; he has to lean down to kiss Quentin. So Q pulls him down on the bed next to Margo, on more even footing. He strokes his cheek.This is what Eliot needs. Sometime, he wants Quentin to take the lead and order him around, to talk dirty, to tell him to suck his cock and get down on his knees. Sometime, he wants Quentin to flip him over and fuck him and pull his hair and tell him what a good boy he is. 

“Really?” Quentin asks. 

“Did my thoughts stutter?” Eliot asks. “But not today.” 

“I better get to watch,” Margo says drowsily. She’s falling asleep. 

Quentin tangles his fingers in Eliot’s curls. He never does this. Eliot gets pissy when people mess with the stylized perfection of his hair. But tonight he just sort of smiles. Q presses his fingers into his scalp and massages. The smile turns into a sort of contented hum from the back of his throat. As he massages, he leans in and gently, gently kisses Eliot. He doesn’t use his tongue. He barely touches Eliot’s lips, which are heartbreakingly soft. But gently, Quentin takes them between his own, moves his hands down so he’s cupping Eliot’s face. This is what he wants, desperately. Quentin finds he wants it too, wants to make love to Eliot slowly and gently. 

“You two,” Margo says. 

“Go to sleep. You’re halfway there,” Quentin tells her. He strokes Eliot’s stubble with his thumbs, then sucks at his bottom lip. Eliot loves this, he knows. He nips the littlest bit, and is rewarded with a small gasp. He sucks again, and feels Eliot’s tongue dart against his lips. Q’s hand slides to the back of his head and buries itself in his curls. He starts massaging again then deepens the kiss. Eliot’s hand slides to his cheek. They press against each other now, and they both move, rearrange for maximum contact. Eliot wants to feel how hard he is, and he wants to feel Eliot. Q slides his thigh between Eliot’s legs and El sighs softly. 

Eliot needs this. Eliot needs to know how much Quentin wants him and needs him. He is so frightened Julia has taken his place for good. He had never worried about it before; he always understood Q’s relationship with Jules but now that there’s sex involved everything has shifted for him. No no no, Quentin thinks. She is Jules and you are Eliot and you are two different things in my life and I love you both but I love you differently. You are both mine but you are different. Bambi, he thinks. Eliot understands, but he’s still frightened, still worried Quentin will leave. 

Quentin answers by stroking his face. He starts on the buttons on Eliot’s shirt. One at a time, slowly, slowly. He doesn’t just unbutton, he spreads the shirt open as he goes, touches his skin, strokes it. He tells him how gorgeous he is, how much he wants him. 

“Really?” Eliot whispers. 

“Really,” Quentin says. “You’re gorgeous. I wanted you the first time I saw you. I just didn’t think I was good enough.” 

Eliot didn’t think he would be interested, he realizes with a shock. Not because he didn’t like men. But because why would he like Eliot? 

“Because you’re Eliot.” He’s petting his curls now, just staring into his dark eyes. “I want to make love to you.” he says. He remembers that night in the summer, the day’s heat dying in the dark, Eliot singing softly along with Wilco. Eliot remembers that too, and they sit in that moment, remembering the cricket song, their bodies moving with each other, the salty taste of summer skin. I want to hold you in the Bible-black predawn. Q manages to cast without moving away from him, to drop the light down, and they stay in that memory together, foreheads pressed together. They finally move to kiss, and it’s soft, gentle. 

Quentin reaches down and works on his button-down again. Slowly, carefully. When it’s open and untucked, he begins stroking Eliot’s bare skin, then pulls him up and pushes it off his shoulders. At the same time, he shucks off his thermal. They lie back down, bare chest to bare chest. Eliot’s hungry, desperate to be touched. Quentin runs his hands along Eliot’s arms, down his sides. He didn’t realize how much he needed this too, how much, deep-down, he doubted Eliot and Margo. How he always worried he was the convenient boy-toy link between them, and he’d be discarded when they got bored. 

“No,” Eliot says. “No, Q.” Eliot’s hand is on his cheek, his arm around him, pulling his close. “No. It’s not like that.” They press as close as they possibly can. Eliot’s hard against Quentin’s thigh and Quentin knows Eliot can feel him, too. They both reach down and unbuckle each other’s belts, work the buttons and zippers. Eliot’s in immaculate boxers, Quentin in desperately unsexy boxer briefs. He hadn’t dressed for sex. 

“You should always dress for sex,” Eliot says. He palms Quentin through them and it’s everything. Then they’re pulling them off, dropping shoes to the floor, losing socks until they’re naked in bed together. Quentin feels suddenly, desperately shy. 

“Why?” Eliot asks. He traces the patch of hair on Quentin’s chest. “I’ve seen you before.” 

Quentin doesn’t know. It’s something about being laid bare, about the sheer vulnerability of the moment. “It’s me,” Eliot says. “It’s me, Q, it’s me. You’re who I want.” He nuzzles into Quentin’s neck. “It’s me, Quentin,” he repeats, his voice muffled. “And I love you.” 

Quentin didn’t know how much he needed to hear it until he heard it.

“I love you,” Eliot says again. And it’s simple, direct, free of the snark and the drink and the veneer of insouciance. It’s the deep-down Eliot, the broken Eliot. The one who matters. And Quentin’s kissing him again, harder this time, pushing against him, desperate for contact. Eliot knows it; they make an unspoken agreement not to tease each other as he reaches down and grabs Quentin’s cock. And holds him. And Quentin holds Eliot. And both of them, slowly at first, begin to stroke each other. 

Neither wants the semblance of dominance. Eliot pulls the coconut oil over and they carefully slick it on each other, then begin again. Quentin wants the sensitive underside of his cock rubbed; Eliot prefers tighter pressure on his shaft, a hard pull with a slight twist at the end. They both know what the other needs. Then they’re lying together, cocks pressed one to the other, rubbing against each other like two teenagers. They’re slick and the friction is so good; they slide without being too slippery on one another. They thrust against one another, find a rhythm. They’re both tensing; Quentin can feel Eliot’s balls drawing up and knows he’s close. “So are you,” Eliot whispers. “Do it. I want to feel you come on me.” 

Eliot thrusts, thrusts, and the friction is so good, so perfect, and Eliot is whispering to him, begging Quentin to come, just like Quentin wants him to. And Quentin’s gone; he’s spilling himself all over Eliot, all over his own stomach, and Eliot’s arching back, clutching Q and doing the same thing, both of them coming together hard, hard, hard as they tense and ease exactly the way the other one wants, exactly the way the other needs. They hold each other while they finish, still jerking, little drops of white still pearling up on the ends of their cocks. 

“That was what I needed,” Eliot says. “I needed you.” He rests his forehead against Quentin’s, says it aloud again because Q wants to hear it. “I needed you.” 

“I needed you,” Quentin echoes. 

Wordlessly, carefully, they clean each other off. And they pass out next to Margo, Quentin in the middle, tangled up with both of them in a perfect, sticky, beautiful mess. 

*******

Quentin wakes up sticky. His cock is hard again, pressed against Margo’s ass, the rest of him tangled up with her. Eliot is taking up three-quarters of the bed, flat on his back, snoring softly. He doesn’t realize why he’s awake, wishes someone would turn that damn phone off, until he realizes that it’s his and Eliot’s starting to make discontented noises about it. 

Reluctantly, he rolls off Margo and looks at the screen. It’s Jules. “What?” he asks, without any preliminary. “We were asleep.”

“Quentin,” she says, and he’s never heard her this scared before. “I heard the Beast. We need to talk now. Like now.”


	18. Chapter 18

“Oh my god, this better be really fucking good,” Eliot moans as he pulls his clothes on without bothering with boxers. 

“You mean really fucking bad.” Margo’s standing in front of the mirror, fixing her makeup. She’s in what she calls her comfy jammies, yoga pants and a tight tank with a fluffy robe. 

Quentin pulls last night’s thermal over his head. “She sounded really fucking scared,” he said. “Like, I’ve never heard her so scared.” 

“Okay, bitches, I’ll start breakfast,” Eliot says. “But you better fucking eat it this time.” 

“Uh-huh,” Margo says around her lipstick. “Go, Q. A girl needs some fucking secrets.” 

Half an hour later, the three of them are munching blueberry pancakes when Julia and Penny blow into the Cottage. Penny’s hovering over Jules, who looks like she hasn’t slept. Eliot raises an eyebrow. “You two look like you just survived a particularly gruesome frat party.” 

“What, you mean like he looks every day?” Margo asks. 

“Shut the fuck up, Queen Bitch, this is important,” Penny says. 

“Do you mean him, or me?” Margo demands. “Because you sure as fuck did not just call me that.” 

“Down, Bambi,” Eliot says. “Pancakes?” 

Penny and Jules shakes their heads in disgust. He shrugs. “You’re missing out.” 

“Jules, are you okay?” Quentin asks. He wants to run across the room and hug her but he’s terrified of the reaction everyone might have, including her. 

“I fucking heard it,” she says. “I fucking heard the Beast. It was in my fucking head, and I fucking heard it. It talked to me. It knows us.” 

“Okay, this calls for some serious day-drinking,” Eliot says. 

“Explain,” Margo says. 

“So, um, we decided to try that psychic bond spell,” Julia begins. 

“Didn’t we all,” Eliot says dryly. 

“Yeah, well, ours probably didn’t turn out quite the same,” Penny snaps. 

“So, as soon as we finished the spell, the Beast started talking to me,” Julia says. “Like, I knew the spell took effect because all of a sudden in my head I’m hearing, ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Miss Wicker come to join us for an evening.’”

“Okay, that counts as fucked up,” Margo says. 

“And at first it’s just this weird singing, like these post-war songs that I don’t think are actually real songs — like it made them up to sound that way or something. Then it starts really talking. And it’s saying how it knows me, and starting telling me shit about myself. Like about Quentin and me trying cigarettes behind the gym in sixth grade and the time we took this Shakespeare class together and he had to read MacBeth while I did Lady MacBeth, and about —” She turns bright red but then recovers. “— about getting Penny back from the Neitherlands. And it starts saying how we’ve tried 10 times to stop it and 11 isn’t our lucky number. Then it started rambling about Eliot and Margo, and Eliot growing up in Indiana and Margo getting — well, anyway. In detail. Like graphic, graphic fucking detail, like it was standing there when this shit happened.” She turns to Eliot. “Your father killed your dog because you refused to help them slaughter pigs when you were nine.” 

Eliot drops the bottle of liquor he’s drinking from. Margo looks stricken. 

“It hits all these fucked up pivotal moments and it just keeps talking, and it won’t fucking stop, and it just keeps going and going and going and Penny and I turned up the music, and we drank, and we took all these fucking pills but it didn’t stop until the spell wore off.”

“It says it’s going to meet us in Fillory. And it says we’re all going to die. It says it loves to listen to Quentin’s pathetic little thoughts but it wishes he would stop that stupid pop music.” 

“That’s why your wards don’t fucking work for me, Swiftie,” Penny says. “It’s not me. I’s the fucking Beast. I have to stay away from you as much as possible.” 

“It’s psyching us out,” Quentin says. “It’s trying to get in our heads and scare us.”

Julia shakes her head. “No, Q. This is different. If this thing is really Martin Chatwin he’s got some really strong, really fucked-up magic going on. And he knows about the time loops and he’s coming for us before we can kill him.”

“So what the fuck do we do?” Eliot asks. “Can’t it just like, show up at Brakebills and eat us?” 

Julia shakes her head. “It can’t get through the wards. As long as we stay here, we’re safe. Except in order to kill it, we have to leave. And there’s always a chance the wards will go down. In every single probability spell, that’s how it gets us. We have to come up with some magic, and we have to go to Fillory, and we have to kill it.”

“Or else what?” Margo asks. 

“We fucking die. Soon. You saw the spells.”

“So we get started,” Quentin says. “Today. You and I, we start in the spellwork we talked about. Once we’ve got it done, we go in, we kill the Beast, we get the fuck out.” 

“We rescue the girl first,” Penny says firmly. “If not, I’m out. You want my help, that’s the condition. We get her out. And we do it soon.” 

Julia winces. “I heard her too. I’m with Penny.”

“But we don’t even — “ Eliot begins. 

“Yeah, we do,” Julia says. “Her name is Victoria. She was one of the third years. And we’re getting her the fuck out of there.”

Quentin holds up his hands. “Wait. How do we suddenly like, know that?” 

“The Beast called her by name. Said he would kill her like he killed all her little classmates at Brakebills if she wouldn’t cooperate.” 

“Fuck, that’s a shit end to the mystery of the third-year class,” Eliot says, and takes another drink. 

“Okay, okay, so we fucking save her,” Margo says. “Jesus.” 

“All right,” Julia says. “So before Q and I can start the spells, we need to see what everyone can do. Let’s start there.” 

****************************

Pancakes forgotten, Eliot bitching that no one ever eating his fucking cooking, they all tramp outside into the cold. Eliot has enough sense to wear a coat. Penny, who now regards himself as a kind of spy, has tramped back to the psychic dorm. They start with Margo. “You can freeze and shatter things,” Jules says. 

Margo throws her the side-eye. “How do you know?” 

Quentin rolls his eyes. “Because you told us all about how you set a record breaking into the Cottage like, a million times. Why don’t you start with a glass of water. Work your way up.” 

So Margo stands behind the Cottage, in her fluffy slippers, a coat over her so-called comfy jammies, and begins running through spells. She shatters glass. She freezes the air around them and then warms it up again. They hop the old portal to the pool and she freezes that solid, top to bottom, walks out and stands on it. She freezes the wooden door the the poolhouse and shatters it. 

“How big of an object can you free and shatter?” Julia asks. 

“I don’t fucking know,” Margo says. 

They tramp back to the Cottage. “Start with that sapling,” Quentin suggests, “and work your way up. If it starts to feel like too much —” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not gonna niffin out on your asses.” Her breath fogs in the cold. She concentrated and casts. A small, bending oak sapling freezes solid, then shatters.

“Try a bigger one,” Quentin urges. He stamps his feet and draws his arms around himself. He really wishes he had thought to wear a coat over here yesterday, and thinks about asking Eliot if he has an extra. Eliot notices, drapes his own coat over Q and pulls him tight against him. It feels good to be the one being draped instead of the one doing the draping. 

She works her way up until she hits something too large to work with, a tree about twenty feet high and thick. “I can’t,” she pants. “I don’t know if I’m tired or I just can’t, but I can’t.” 

Julia points to a bird sitting on a nearby branch. “Okay, this is gonna suck,” she says. “But I need you to think about the water in it. Every living thing is mostly water. Freeze it.” 

“You want me to freeze that fucking bird?” Margo asks. 

Julia nods. 

Margo pinches her lips into a thin line. The bird falls from the tree. They run over and look, and it’s on the ground, frozen solid. Eliot nudges it with his toe. “Well, you did it, Bambi,” he says. 

“Okay, so you need some standard amplification spells,” Jules says. “Now try it on that.” She points to a V of geese flying through the air. “Pick one. Freeze it and shatter it.” 

Margo makes a face. 

“We need to see the range you’re capable of working with,” Quentin explains. 

She closes one eye as if she’s sighting through a shotgun. One of the geese, flying almost straight above them, explodes into red shards. 

“4.0, motherfucker!” Margo yells. 

“Amplification spells for you and you might be able to freeze the Beast, at least buy us some time,” Julia says. “I don’t think you can kill it, but you can slow it down which is worth almost as much.” 

Quentin takes his hand from Eliot’s. “Your turn,” he says. “But instead of moving it, break it. Think of what it’s made of, and break the bonds between them. Don’t try to go down to the atomic level. You might niffin out attempting a nuclear reaction.” 

Eliot swallows hard. He closes his eyes and concentrates. Quentin can tell this isn’t something he normally does; he confines his telekinesis to whizzing things across rooms and pushing objects, not pulling them apart. But he’s trying. Suddenly, a tree splinters into tiny shards. Immediately, Eliot falls to his knees and pinches the middle of his forehead. His nose is bleeding. “Shit,” Quentin says. Jules produces a tissue seemingly from nowhere and they press it against Eliot’s face. “Are you okay, El?” 

“This sometimes happens when I do something really big,” he says. “Like this time I made a bus — nevermind.” Quentin knows what he’s talking about; Eliot once got drunk and told him the story of how he discovered he was telekinetic: he pushed a bus to run over and kill one of his high school tormentors. It’s haunted him ever since, tied magic to pain. 

“Okay, so you need some kind of protection spell,” Quentin says. 

“What if his headaches and nosebleeds are a protection in themselves, and keep him from niffining out?” Julia asks. 

Quentin considers it. “Eliot, what do you think?” 

“I don’t fucking know,” he manages. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose now and dripping blood on the ground. “But I think I could have thrown something bigger. It would just fucking hurt more.” 

“Okay, so we need something to protect his brain in case the telekinesis is messing with some area in there and causing potential damage,” Jules says. “Do you see any auras? Any concussion symptoms?” 

“No,” Eliot says. He’s still on his knees on the cold ground. Quentin takes his coat off and puts it back on him. 

“How do we know he won’t go too far and niffin out?” Margo demands. 

“He has to be the judge of that,” Julia says. 

“Okay, so what about you two? What can you do?” Margo asks. 

Quentin and Jules look at each other. “We don’t know yet,” Quentin says. “We still need to work that out. We each need our own spells, and then we need something cooperative. And the cooperative spell is going to be fucking big.”


	19. Chapter 19

So they hit the library. First, they pick an easy double amplification spell for Margo, a McGruder’s Charm flexed into a Saurian Complex, which is hard to do without the Saurian Complex just drowning out the McGruder’s, rather than letting the two combine exponentially, which is what they’re supposed to do. It takes them most of the afternoon to scribble out the metamath, then work out the poppers and meld the Estonian with the corrupt Arabic. “She’s going to have to add it to every fucking casting, which is going to be a bitch and a half and take up more time,” Quentin says. “This is at least a twenty-second spell so it’s got to count. It’s not something you can just fire at will.” 

“I think it’s going to be the best we can do,” Jules says. 

“Are we sure she cast this?” Quentin asks. 

“It’s two different spells,” Jules says. “She’ll be fine.” 

They move onto Eliot. In addition to the same amplification spell, they need something, most of all, to protect his brain. Julia hits the healing texts. The problem is that telekinesis is a power that seems to stem from the brain itself, so protecting the brain risks weakening his powers. But finally, they twist the amplification spell up with some kind of shield to magically protect him — it’s based on a patch that prevents psychic interference, something Julia snaps up for Penny. By midnight, they work out the spells for Eliot, then they move into building the patch for Penny. “It should keep the Beast out,” Julia says. They have to break into the infirmary for supplies. But Quentin distracts them with some bullshit hypochondria while Jules grabs what they need. It’s another several hours to reverse engineer the patch, which sends them scuttling to the supply room several times, casting at least three spells, and finally digging up an old soldering gun. By the time they finish, they’re in the uncomfortable neverland of drooping with exhaustion and yet thrumming with caffeine. 

They trudge up their dorm. At Quentin’s room, they both stop. Neither of them, suddenly, knows what to say. “Do you want to —” Q asks. 

Jules nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” 

They’re both so tired they only manage to kick off their shoes before falling into bed, back-to-back, on top of the stupid key-and-bee comforter . Julia feels warm behind Q, comfortable, like home. But she also feels different and wonderful and somehow dangerous. The scent of her hair gives him a hard-on. He thinks about Fillory, imagines the white-sand beaches around Whitespire, the Clock Barrens, Chatwin’s Torrent. Anything but her. 

“Q?” Julia says into the dark. 

“Yeah?” he asks, and he knows his voice is raspy but he can’t control it. 

“The other night —” 

“Look, maybe we shouldn’t talk about it,” Quentin says. “It happened and it’s done and it won’t happen again. We needed to do it and we did and it’s over.” He’s harsher than he intended to be. 

“Except it did happen.” 

Neither of them say anything for a minute. It’s quiet up here, a silence Quentin doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to. 

“I’m afraid,” Q finally says. “I’m afraid in like, every direction. I’m afraid if I talk about it I’ll ruin something precious and perfect and amazing. I’m afraid it was nothing but necessary and you think I’m crazy. Do you have any idea how Eliot and Margo reacted? They lost their shit, Jules. They’re terrified. Margo almost followed us to the library because she can’t stand the idea of you and I alone.” 

“It was something special, Q,” Jules says. 

“And where the fuck do we go with that?” Quentin demands. 

She doesn’t speak. Quentin thinks, eventually, that she’s fallen asleep. 

“We go where we’ve always gone,” she says finally. “Wherever we need to. Together.” 

“But what if we want to do it again?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer. 

They lay there in the dark again. Quentin wonders desperately if he should ruin everything and touch her. He knows she’s wondering the same thing. “Do you — do you want to go sleep in your room?” he asks. 

“No,” she says. “I want to be with you. But we can’t, you know. Do anything. We can’t. Everything will fall apart.” 

And he knows she’s right. If they give in to each other, everything will fall apart, and there’s a good chance they’ll end up dead. 

“I love them, you know,” he says. “Eliot and Margo. I’m in love with them. I don’t want to hurt them.” 

“I love Penny,” she says. “Asshole that he is. I love that motherfucker.” 

“But I love you too,” Quentin says. 

She reaches across them and grabs his hand. “I know. Q,” she tells him. “I know.” 

“Thanks, Han,” he says. 

They both smile into the dark. 

And they fall asleep that way, hand-in-hand.


	20. Chapter 20

They teach Eliot and Margo the spells the next day. Q’s curious if they’re actually going to work, if they’re going to play well with Eliot and Margo’s disciplines. But they do. There’s no perfect way to test if Margo can shatter actual flesh at substantial distance, but she can freeze and shatter trees from far away, and big ones at that — she ends up with some good-sized splinters in her arms — and can blow whole flocks into bloody shards. Eliot is able to shatter rocks at a distance, and once lifts the back shed for a brief period of time with no ill effects. When Jules sticks the homemade patch on the back of Penny’s neck, he stops, shakes his head, and says that the voice has stopped. 

“It’s stopped?” 

“It stopped. I can’t hear that stupid fucking singing anymore.” He picks Julia up and kisses her. Quentin stuffs down the jealousy. Margo looks at him sideways and he keeps his face carefully blank. Eliot feeds them — some kind of gumbo that’s warm and sticks to their ribs — then sends Q and Jules back to the library to work on their own spells. They grab a carrel away from any other students. 

“So what do we want these fuckers do to?” Quentin asks her. “We need at least two for each of us and one big cooperative thing that can kill.” 

“Plus we need to fix up Chillinger’s Bird Repellent for Penny.” 

“Fuck,” Quentin says. 

“Fuck,” Julia agrees. 

But just as they’ve always done, like the monstrous cooperative history project in tenth grade, like the the horrendous groupwork in that stupid college Shakespeare class, they hit the books together. Quentin decides they need a spell that slices things. “If we slice its hands, it can’t cast,” he says reasonably. They need a super powerful shield spell, one that preferably bounces spells back at the caster. They need a super-powered version of the Chillinger Bird Repellent, one that may take a while to cast but which packs a serious punch. And then they need some fireballs.

“Everything gets distracted when it’s on fire,” Quentin says reasonably. 

This hasn’t gotten them to the big cooperative spell, the one they can use to actually kill the Beast, but they figure they have enough to do. 

Standard amplification spells on Chillinger’s Bird Repellent, plus a magnification to make the punch bigger. It’s a spell with a shit ton of moving parts when they finish with it, something that will take Penny a while to learn to cast. The metamath has their heads swimming, and it involves three different languages, but they manage it. 

Jules smiles weakly. “And that was the easy one,” she says. 

Then they decide to tackle the slicing spell. They find something that will chop down trees, a tricky spell in Aramaic, something none of them have really studied. It’s an axe, not a knife, but Q figures it’ll wield basically the same. Now they have to teach it to work on actual flesh, which it’s reluctant to do, since it’s engineered to avoid just that. They end up having to pick the thing apart, without the benefit of speaking the language, figure out how the protection part of the spell works, remove it, then make the metamath work around it again. It’s miserable work, hard and dirty and ugly, twisting the magic in directions it doesn’t necessarily want to go. But they manage it. Eventually. 

And they’re done for the day. They grab some food from the dining hall on the fly and head up to the dorm. They sleep in Jules’ room this time. Both of them need to shower; they’re greasy and tired and their hair is lank. They’re running on Eliot’s Adderall and Red Bull. But Julia just smells even more like Julia and it’s driving Quentin crazy. 

“I think I need to go sleep in my room,” he finally says into the dark. 

“Q, if I sleep alone, I dream about moths.”

“I’ll walk you over to the psychic dorm.” 

“Quentin.” 

“Julia.” 

“I won’t give you up because we can’t deal with what happened. We have to work through it.” 

“How, Jules?”

She sighs. “I don’t fucking know.” She turns toward him. Quentin tenses. It’s dangerous. She’s dangerous. During the day it’s the same as always but at night everything is different. Everything. 

“Quentin,” she says. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I feel anymore. What if we die tomorrow? We could all fucking die tomorrow. I won’t lose my best friend in the whole fucking world because he’s scared we might have sex.” 

“Back to back,” he says firmly. “Like always. Like before. Okay? Like before.” 

“I can’t lose you over this.” 

“I can’t lose you either.” He takes a deep breath. “And if you think my heart isn’t breaking right now you’re fucking wrong.” 

“I’m scared, Q.” 

“Me too, Jules.” 

“I just want us to hug you like before. But we can’t anymore.” 

“I know,” she says softly. “Not now. In the morning, okay?” 

He nods into the pillow. They’re practically sharing one. He can smell her hair. “In the morning.” 

“I love you, Q,” she says as she turns over. 

“I know,” he says into the dark. And he doesn’t sleep for a long, long time. 

******************

The next morning, they shower. They eat a real breakfast. Quentin texts Eliot and Margo; Julia texts Penny. They get back to work. Fireballs first. They start with the standard cigarette spark spell. “It’s small,” Quentin says, “but it sets shit on fire.” They use some massive amplification charms and manage to get it to a fist-sized ball of flame. Now they have to throw it. Julia suggests making it play with Chillinger’s Bird Repellent. 

“I never thought I’d say this, but thank you Mayakovsky for teaching us that fucking spell,” Julia says. 

It takes them most of the day to get the math and the magic to all play together. But by the end of it, they’re hurling fireballs. 

“You know,” Julia says, as she throw a fireball along the backside of the library, “we’re basically making up our own battle magic.” 

“Has this just occurred to you?” Quentin asks. 

“Battle magic is illegal at Brakebills.” 

“Then Fogg can fucking kick us out. I mean, seriously, when have we all last been to class? Do you see anyone coming to discuss our academic standing?” Quentin hurls a fireball. It feels really fucking good. He’s exhausted. When he closes his eyes, all he sees are numbers.   
“So tomorrow, onto the shield. Then we’re ready to go rescue Victoria. And the random dude.” 

“Sure. Fine. Whatever. And pray we have enough juice to get back to Brakebills before the Beast catches us.” 

That night, they agree not to sleep in the library. It hurts Quentin to suggest it, but he needs time with Margo and Eliot and he knows Jules needs time with Penny. They’re happy to see him. “How’s our little knowledge boy?” Margo asks when he drags himself in the door at 10 pm. 

“We still need a super-powerful shield spell,” Quentin says. “Then we’re ready. We’ll teach everyone the spells and go rescue Victoria. Which I’m still not convinced of but we fucking need Penny, so.” He shrugs. 

“You’re hungry and exhausted,” Eliot says. “Comfort food. Mac and cheese, stat. Alton Brown’s recipe, which is based on Thomas Jefferson’s original. Sit on the couch with Margo and watch America’s Next Top Dallas Cheerleader Beauty Queen.” 

Quentin collapses next to her on the sex couch. She smells so good. She wrinkles her nose at him. “You smell like smoke,” she says. 

“Fireballs,” he explains. 

“Ooooh, teach me,” she says. “I always wanted to throw fireballs.” 

“Tomorrow,” he says. “I’m sofuckingtired, Margo.” He leans against her shoulder. She smells like floral shampoo and soap and Chanel and pure girl. “What are we watching?” 

“Project Runway.” 

“Okay,” he says. And he must have fallen asleep because suddenly Eliot’s presenting him with a bowl of mac and cheese. 

“You drooled on me, asshole,” Margo informs him. “It’s a sign of love so I allowed it.” 

“Can we watch The X-Files now?” he asks. 

She smacks him. “Shut up. Todd might come in and it’ll ruin my rep. Come upstairs and we can watch the one with the vampire kid from The Sandlot. But if you get mac and cheese on my bed I’m going to destroy you, Coldwater.” 

The three of them cuddle into bed, Quentin in a pair of Eliot’s immaculate pajama pants. He swears they may be starched. Quentin devours the food like a man starved and falls asleep on Eliot. When he wakes up, the lights are off. Margo’s out.   
“Hey,” Eliot says. 

“Hey,” Quentin says. “What time is it?” 

“Two. I took some Adderall and I can’t sleep. Smoke?” 

“No. The bed’s too warm.” 

“Margo won’t kill us if we do it once.” Eliot sparks up two cigarettes and hands one to Quentin. They ash in his empty mac and cheese bowl. “So how are the spells going? For real?” 

“Honestly? I think we’ve got a handle on them.” 

Eliot ashes into the bowl, edges closer to Q. “You’ve been sleeping Julia’s room.” It’s not a question. 

“Yeah.”

“And you haven’t —” 

“No.”

“Because if you want out, I get it.” Eliot blows smoke into the dark. “I really do.” 

Quentin knows that this isn’t the real Eliot. This is the Eliot veneer, the one who doesn’t care about anything ever. “Eliot. I don’t want to leave. I want you. I told you that the other day and I meant it. But if you want me to go I get that too.” 

“Do you think I’d waste my time on Jefferson’s mac and cheese recipe for someone I wanted to leave?” 

Quentin smiles. “Probably not. Wanna try to go to sleep?”

“Yeah.” Eliot stubs out his cigarette. They both know Margo will bitch at them in the morning. 

“Try not to hog the whole bed this time.” Quentin curls onto Eliot. He smells like Eliot, like the mix of clean laundry and expensive cologne, probably stolen, and the pure Eliot scent that’s just his own. “I love you, you know.”

“I love you, too.” 

They go to sleep like that. But as usual, Quentin ends up cuddled with Margo while Eliot takes up three-quarters of the bed.   
****************************

The shield charm is the bitchiest. They don’t even know where to begin. “Wards?” Julia says. “We could actually ward ourselves so nothing could get through.” 

They decide to work with the bitchiest but strongest they know: Koyosegei’s ward. But they need to be able to throw it up fast. They can’t intensify or magnify it. They decide they’re just going to have to work in pairs and watch out for each other. 

“But the Beast is going to move fucking fast,” Quentin says. “I don’t think this is going to work.” 

They spend the day trying to break it into cooperative magic, but it either falls apart or takes too long to cast. It’s a long day, full of metamath in a carrel, tramping out in the cold to test, failing, plodding despondently back to the carrel, and trying again. 

“Fuck this,” Quentin says. “We need some real battle magic.” 

“And where the hell are we going to get that?” Julia asks. 

“They used to teach it at Brakebills. That means someone used to teach it. We find the teacher.” 

“All right,” Julia agrees. “We find the teacher and what, go beg?” 

“Got a better idea?” Quentin asks. 

They find Bigby’s name in an old yearbook. It takes some doing, a few locator spells, but they track her down. The sun’s setting by the time they drag themselves to her her place. 

A pretty, long-haired pixie answers the door. They know she’s a pixie because she has fucking pink wings. 

“Um, Bigby?” Julia asks tentatively. 

“What the fuck are two Brakebills students doing on my garden step? Let me guess. You need battle magic. Henry was an idiot, bless him, when he discontinued teaching it. Come on it, little time loopers.” She sits them down in a room full of macrame and hippie knicknacks, of Himalayan salt lamps and crystals. She hands them tea. “Well, go on, I didn’t drug it,” she says. “What do you need?”

“Um, a shield charm,” Julia says. “One strong enough to —” 

Bigby holds up a hand. “Don’t know, don’t care. What else?”

“Something big,” Quentin says. “Something we can use to kill a super-powerful magician.” 

“So you want the Shu Shield and the Rhinemann Ultra. The Shu’s pretty simple, if you’re a decent magician. The Rhinemann Ultra requires a master magician to cast. Or you’ll niffin out, little loopers.” 

“Can you write them down?” Julia asks. 

Bigby laughs, and it’s a silvery sound, like bells tinkling. “I can teach them to you. You write them down.” Rapidly, as Julia writes, she runs down the Shu Shield. With the Rhinemann Ultra, she goes slower. “No one can be within twenty feet of you when you cast it,” she warns, “or they’ll be blown up. Now out with you. I have things to do. And tell Henry I said hello, will you? Ask him if he remembers the pear tree. Oh my god, we had such amazing sex under that pear tree.” 

“Will do,” Quentin says. “Thank you.”

“Goodbye, little loopers,” Bigby says. She tosses her glorious hair over one shoulder. “Shoo.” 

Only afterwards do they realize they never told her their names. 

*********************

“All right,” Julia says. The five of them are lined up on the far edge of a field, behind the welters court, where no one’s likely to bother them. First, they run them through the fireball spell, which seems the easiest of the bunch. By noon everyone’s hurling flame, laughing and feeling like a bunch of supervillains. Next they do the amplification of Chillinger’s Bird Spell. It’s a fucking beast, with all the moving parts. Everyone’s having trouble with it, including Julia and Quentin. But by midnight, everyone’s shooting it, and it packs a giant whumph that can drive a decent-sized hole in a tree. 

Julia and Penny stumble back to the psychic dorm, where Penny says he has some protein bars stashed. Quentin follows Eliot and Margo to the Cottage. The library is too fucking far to walk. They eat cereal and go to sleep in a pile. 

The next morning, it’s the slicing spell and the shield charm. The slicing spell takes up most of the morning; the shield charm’s trickier. It’s another late night. But then they’re tossing fireballs at each other; they’re bouncing off and everyone’s laughing, even Penny. It’s exhausted laughter, but it’s laughter nonetheless, and it feels so good after days of hard work and obsessive worry. 

The next morning, Penny takes the day off, and it’s Margo and Eliot’s turn. Margo picks up the spell fairly easily, but it’s a bitch; it ends up adding half a minute to each casting. “One of us is going to have to shield her whenever she decides to cast it,” Eliot says. “She can blow shit into nothing, but it’s no good if she can’t manage to get the spell fired off.” 

Margo keeps practicing, trying to get her time down by destroying trees — if they keep this up, the naturalists are going to come after them —while they turn to Eliot. He’s quickly tearing apart rocks without getting nosebleeds. “This is insane,” he says. “How the fuck did you come up with this?”

Quentin shrugs. “We worked out the math.” 

Eliot cooks them all a big stick-to-your-ribs dinner that night, a roast with new potatoes and root vegetables. Comfort food. “We’re going to get Victoria tomorrow,” Penny announces, and it’s something everyone already knows. “We’re going to go through that fucking clock, we’re going to Fillory, we’re going to get her out, and we’re running back here before we even see the Beast. Okay? Got it?”

They all nod solemnly. “We’re fucking ready,” Jules says. “We have the spells. We can do this. When we get back, Q and I will break down the Rhinemann Ultra, split it for two casters, power up, and we’ll go back to Fillory and kill the fucker. Game over.” 

Quentin and Jules clear while Eliot and Margo wash up. “Jules,” Quentin whispers. “We’re going to fucking Fillory. We are going to fucking Fillory.” 

She squeezes his hand. He looks down at her, and he knows she’s remembering all those rainy days they spent pretending, the map they scribbled, when they were ten years old, on the bottom of her mother’s coffee table. It’s still there; Quentin looked last time he was at Julia’s house. 

“I know,” she says. 

He has never wanted to kiss her more than he does in that moment. 

“Hurry up with the fucking dishes!” Margo yells. The spell breaks. They looks away, gather up more plates. Quentin spends the night at the Cottage. Julia sleeps at the psychic dorm. They meet back at 8 am, all of them but Penny in Patagonia and North Face, hiking-appropriate clothes. Quentin opens the clock and steps through.


	21. Chapter 21

And it’s nothing like the Fillory they expected. 

The trees are bare. The grass is grey. No birds sing; they appear to have come out of a clock tree. But the air fucking smells like magic, reeks of it. It prickles their skin and makes the hair rise on the backs of their necks. “Holy fucking shit,” Quentin says. “We’re in fucking Fillory.” 

“Thank you, fanboy. Penny, where the fuck is this girl?” Eliot asks.

Penny concentrates for a minute, which is far too long for Quentin. “Got her,” he says. “Hold onto me.” Quentin has the weirdest feeling of moving without moving and suddenly he’s in what can only be termed a dungeon. It smells like urine and feces and despair. There are suspicious stains on the white stone walls, around Ember and Umber’s seal. And a girl hangs there in chains, chains hanging from the ceiling, actual fucking metal chains attached to actual fucking cuffs. This is so far from anything he’s ever experienced, something out of the dark ages, the Inquisition. 

“We’re from Brakebills,” Penny whispers. “And we’re here to get you the fuck out.” 

The girl moans. Julia gets to work unspelling her shackles. 

“He’s coming,” sings a voice from the other cell. Quentin runs over, unpicks the wards on the door and sees an old man there. An old, old man with white hair, with a familiar face. It’s Christopher fucking Plover, child molester. He slams the cell shut. 

“He’s coming,” Plover sings again. “Martin is coming and you can’t stop him.” 

Margo, Eliot, and Julia are unpicking the shackles now. Penny is sticking close, ready to travel them all out. They hear whistling in the hallway. 

“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck,” Quentin whispers. “Hurry the fuck up.” 

It comes closer, changes to a song in a rich timber:   
Oh, there'll be bluebirds over  
The white cliffs of Dover  
Tomorrow  
Just you wait and see 

“Quentin Coldwater! I can smell you!” the voice calls merrily. 

Julia unspools the last of the shackles. The door bangs open. A spell slams them all against the wall, and they see the moths swarming, the three-piece suit, the extra fingers clasped almost politely in front of the no-longer-a-man Martin Chatwin. “Well, well, well. Miss Wicker, Mr. Coldwater, Miss Hanson, Mr. Waugh, and Mr. Adiyodi. On a rescue mission, I see.”   
Julia recovers first, throws a fireball. He bats it away. Quietly, Quentin hears Margo readying her spell. Eliot shoots off one of his, trying to explode the rock above the Beast’s head. It shatters it dust, but the Beast keeps coming. One step at a time. 

“No, no, no, Miss Hanson,” The Beast says in tut-tut voice, and just as Margo’s spell finishes, it hits a shield, bounces back. Everyone dives at Penny, but Margo’s not fast enough, hasn’t recovered quickly enough from the casting, and it slams her. She shatters into frozen shards and it’s worse than Alice, worse than anything Quentin’s ever seen, the splinters of flesh flying and breaking with icicle-like cracks against walls and stones and bars. Penny and Victoria yank Eliot, Quentin, and Julia. And they’re gone. 

*******

The clock tree opens for them and they scramble through, Penny and Julia dragging Victoria. Quentin’s nearly carrying Eliot. They tumble onto the hardwood floor of the Cottage and slam the clock door shut. For a moment, Quentin’s terrified the Beast will follow them but the Brakebills wards hold. 

Eliot collapses. He’s covered in melting blood. They’re all covered in blood This is Margo’s blood, Quentin thinks. This is Margo’s blood and she is fucking dead and you have to nut up and take care of Eliot before he slips away from you. He lifts him to his feet. And then Jules is there, thank god, Julia is there with him, blood-smeared, helping him get Eliot up the stairs, take his clothes off, put him in the shower. Julia disappears, presumably to shower herself. Eliot is curled up and sobbing, incoherent. Quentin washes the atomized body of his best friend from his hair. Then he shucks his own clothes off, stands behind Eliot and washes himself. The water runs red, then pink. When it’s finally clear, he sits, fits himself behind Eliot. The water washes over them. Quentin refuses to cry. Instead, he holds Eliot, and holds him, and holds him.

Finally, after fifteen minutes or an hour or three, Quentin stands. He pulls Eliot up. He sags into Quentin. “Bambi,” he manages. 

“I know, El,” Quentin says. “I know.” He dries him off. He finds his pajamas, takes him to bed. He finds Eliot’s stash, the one they jokingly call Fear and Loathing at Brakebills. The blue ones are klonopin, he remembers. He gives El three of them and lies down next to him. He’s still crying, eyes red, nose running, wiping it on his sleeve like a little kid. Quentin gets him tissues. “She’s dead,” he says. 

“I know, El.” Quentin strokes his hair. “I know, El.” 

“Need a fucking drink.” 

“Shhhhh. The klonopin will kick in in a minute.” 

“Need a fucking drink, Coldwater!” Eliot pushes him away, gets up, grabs a bottle of absinthe and chugs the whole thing. “She’s fucking DEAD!” 

“Eliot.” Quentin stands up, gathers him in his arms. He’s worried the alcohol won’t play well with the meds. “Eliot, I need you to lie down.” 

“Bambi’s dead.” 

“I know, El. I know. Just lie down, okay? Hold onto me. Lie down and hold onto me.” 

Eliot clings to him. “She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead,” he repeats, over and over. It becomes slurred. Then it finally dwindles, stops. Quentin makes sure he’s lying on his side, prays to whatever the fuck is listening that Eliot’s liver has withstood worse, and heads downstairs to check on the others.

Julia and Penny are sitting on the couch. The girl, Victoria, is next to them. She’s tall and thin and looks horrifically broken. Her eyes are narrowed and she’s all but holding her hands over her ears. “She needs a patch,Q,” Julia says. “We have to make her a patch like Penny’s.” 

“I have to get to the Neitherlands,” she says. “I managed to get Josh there before that thing killed everyone. He might still be alive. It’s only been two weeks.” 

“It’s been two years,” Penny says. 

“Time moves differently there,” she explains. “I have to —” She tries to stand and falls. 

“Put her in Margo’s bed,” Quentin says. “She needs to sleep.” 

“Eliot?” Julia asks. 

“I’m going to go back up there in a second. I made the mistake of giving him klonopin and then he roared out of bed and drained a bottle of absinthe. He’s —” Quentin looks at Jules and suddenly he’s on the floor, his head on her lap, sobbing for Margo and for Eliot and for everything. She leans over and holds him. It’s like when his mom left, when he was falling into pieces. She was there. She is always there. 

“Come on,” she says. “Come up and go to sleep with Eliot, okay? I’m going to start parsing out the Rhinemann.” 

“You need to sleep,” he sniffles.

“No,” she says. “I need to kill this fucker.” 

“Why didn’t you grab the old man?” Penny asks. 

“It was Christopher fucking Plover,” Quentin spits. 

“Oh fuck that dude,” Penny says. 

“Fuck him with a rusty coathanger,” Quentin agrees. “Throw him to the Beast and let him fucking rot.” 

Julia leads him upstairs. She tucks him in bed next to Eliot. Quentin curls around him. He’s the big spoon this time. He has to be.


	22. Chapter 23

Eliot gets up. He goes downstairs. He gets dressed. He speaks in monosyllables. He doesn’t eat. Quentin hovers over him. Julia hovers over Quentin. Penny and Victoria compare notes over traveling. She keeps insisting she has to go to the Neitherlands to get her boyfriend, Josh. Or her ex-boyfriend. She isn’t sure. “He slept with my best friend, so I don’t know where we’re at, but I know I have to get him out,” she says. 

“We need to make her a patch,” Julia says. “She can still hear the Beast and it’s making her crazy.” 

“I don’t want to leave El.” 

“Look,” she tells him. “Penny and I will go get the shit we need. You and I can cast it here. Okay?”

He nods. He doesn’t say what he wants to say, which is, I don’t want you to leave me, either. “Once we get you the patch, you can go get Josh, okay?” Julia says. “Then Q, you and I need to start work on the Rhinemann Ultra.” 

“First we need to find a spell to power up.”

“We’ll check the library,” she says. “There has to be one.” 

Eliot still hasn’t eaten or moved from the couch by the time Penny and Julia get back with the supplies. It takes a while, but Quentin and Julia manage to make another patch for Victoria. She immediately flashes out. 

“Hope she comes back.” Eliot says. “Because if we did all that for nothing, I’m going to kill myself.” 

Julia and Quentin exchange a look. He isn’t kidding. 

“What, you gonna do the Beast’s work for him?” Penny asks. “That’s the pussy way out.” 

“The cock way out,” Eliot whispers. “We all know pussy’s tougher.” 

Julia takes a piece of paper out of her bag. “Time to get to work, Q,” she says. “We need to parse this motherfucker, split it, then power up. You ready?” 

Quentin nods. It’s all he can do. 

So they start. It’s complex as fuck, with a ton of moving parts. It’s a lot to hold together on its own, let alone to parse. They’re spread all over the table. Eliot sits on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, TV blaring at nothing. Penny sits with him. 

Todd wanders in. “Hey, what are you kids up to?” he asks. 

“Get the fuck out, Todd,” Julia says. He turns and walks out. 

“At least he’s an obedient fuckhead,” Quentin says. 

“No shit,” Eliot agrees from the couch. 

Quentin and Jules get back to work. They raid the Fear and Loathing at Brakebills box for Adderall. It takes them until midnight just to figure out how the spell works. 

“We need a fuckton of power to cast this, Q,” Julia says. “Even with both of us working.” 

“We can look for a spell. If we don’t find it, we’ll think of something else.” 

She nods. Suddenly, Victoria flashes back in. She’s got a tubby, bearded dude with her. “Hi,” he says. “I’m, uh, Josh? I’d say sorry for your loss but I lost my entire fucking class two weeks ago, so. You know how it goes. Life’s a bitch, right?” 

“You gonna help us kill this motherfucker?” Penny asks from the couch. 

“Fuck yeah,” Josh says. 

Victoria introduces them all. Then everyone wanders off to bed, Julia and Penny back to the psychic dorm, Josh and Victoria to Margo’s room, which hurts on a visceral level but what can they do about it? Eliot and Quentin drag themselves up to his room. Both are still wearing the same pajamas they slept in last night. 

“Did you eat today?” Quentin asks. 

“Did you?” Eliot asks dully. 

“You have to eat.” 

“You have to live on more than my fucking Adderall.” 

They lie down, forehead to forehead. “I keep turning around and expecting to see her,” Eliot says.

“Me too,” Quentin tells him. “It’s like, I keep waiting for this fucking snarky remark that never fucking comes, you know?” 

Eliot sniffles. “Yeah. Q?” 

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” 

Quentin closes his eyes. “I don’t fucking know, El.” 

“You should be with Julia again. One more time, before we all fucking die.”

“No. I love you, El.”

“You love her, too.” 

“You’re pushing me away.” 

“I’m not telling you to leave me. I’m telling you that you should just do it. Just before we all go. I see the way you two look at each other, Q. I’m not fucking blind. But I also know how you look at me. I know you love me. I know it’s different.” 

“You’re trying to play the martyr and it hurts and it sucks and we need to go to sleep, okay?”

“Just — just think about it. Because if I could, I would go back and do it one last time. Just with her. Just the two of us. It has nothing to do with getting off and both of us know it.” 

Quentin hugs him tighter. “I love you, Eliot. I love you. I love you. This is the worst thing in the world. But we’ll get through it, okay? It’ll be like before. It’ll be like this summer again. I promise. One day. Not tomorrow or the next day or next year or the next, but one day. I swear.”

“No, Q,” Eliot says sadly. “It never will be. And we both know it.” 

***************

It’s coming for them now. It knows them. They know it. Julia and Quentin have the spell parsed and it takes them three full days to separate it, but they manage it, finally: to break it into two separate components they can cast in tandem. 

“But even if we power up, we need literally one minute,” Julia tells everyone. “One fucking minute. A whole minute. You’ve got to get it for us or we’re all dead.” 

They’ve taught Josh and Victoria the spells by now. They’ve decided if they split into two, half casting the shield and the other half casting the spells, switching on and off, they can manage it. “Chop off the extra fingers first,” Julia advises. “That’ll fuck up his ability to cast.” 

Julia and Quentin hit the library. Eliot tags along. And they start looking for a spell to power them up. The card catalogue is useless. They break into the restricted section, unspool the Koyosegei, which Jules and Quentin are getting pretty good at by now. In a far corner, they find what they need: a small book that, tucked on one page, has a spell to ramp up their magical abilities. Temporarily. It will cost them each at least a pint of blood; they need the remains of a magical creature of some kind, the stronger the creature, the stronger the spell. 

“Well fuck, where the hell are we supposed to find that?” Quentin asks. 

“We start at the bottom of the food chain,” Julia says. “And we work our way up.” 

********

They begin in a known vampire bar, a dank dive of a building out near the shit end of Battery. Bottom-of-the-floor liquor lines the back of the bar; most of the patrons are chugging shit Pabst or Natty Light. It’s lit in bare bulbs and blinking neon beer signs. This is Julia and Quentin’s party, so they’re the ones who take the risk and step outside the wards. 

“The fuck are you?” asks a burly man in a motorcycle jacket, eyeing Quentin up and down. Apparently the whole Anne Rice gay vampire trope is a total bust. 

“We need some information,” Julia says. Some heads turn from men seated on battered barstools; it smells like spilled beer and worse. 

“What you got for me, baby?” he asks. 

“Blood,” she says. 

“Whose?” he asks. 

“Mine, so it’s the cleanest thing here.” She holds up a blood bag they stole from the infirmary. It’s actually Penny’s; he was the least squicked about needles. “I need to know where to find a lamia.”

The man laughs. “And why the fuck is a nice girl like you looking for a thing like that?”

Julia shrugs. “Call me curious.” 

“Blood first.” 

“Uh-uh. I put the blood on the table. You tell us what we want to know, you pick it up, we walk out of here. I find out you lied, and we come back in with some serious firepower. Deal?”

“I fucking hate magicians.” 

Julia tosses the blood onto a table the looks like it’s been through wars. “Talk,” she says. 

“Under the George Washington bridge,” he tells her.”She’s ancient as all fuck.” He picks up the bag. “Jersey side,” he adds. 

Quentin and Julie leave the bar. “I don’t care if we grew up there, but I don’t want to die in fucking Jersey.” 

“Don’t worry, Q,” Julia says. “Our magic may not take out the Beast, but it sure as fuck will kill a lamia.” 

******

She’s right. 

Mostly. 

They find her. She looks exactly like Margo, and they have to stop Eliot from running at her. She coos at him, calls him Tinkerbell. Penny and Josh have to physically restrain him. Luckily the others get some spells shot off, and the lamia transforms into an old crone. While she’s reeling, Quentin moves in with the knife they’ve dipped in gold and shark’s blood and slits her throat. It’s shockingly easy, the slide of steel through flesh. Blood sprays everywhere. Once she’s bled out, they portal back to Brakebills. And then they break out the saw. 

**********

Julia and Quentin memorize their parts of the Rhinemann Ultra. The others practice casting in unison and setting up the Shu Shield. 

“So we just wander into Fillory and wait for it to find us?” Penny asks. 

“No,” Quentin says. “It’s in Whitespire. We travel into the throne room and yell for it to come the fuck out. That might give Jules and I enough time to start casting the Rhinemann.”

“What if it’s not in fucking Whitespire?” 

“It’s in Whitespire,” Victoria says. 

“Tomorrow, then,” Penny says. “Let’s get this shit over with. I’m tired of living in this fucked up limbo.” 

“At least you weren’t trapped in the Neitherlands for two weeks with nothing but psychedelic carrots to keep you company,” Josh says. 

They all nod. They’re just as sick of it. Everyone’s been living under the threat of death for so long they’re starting to unravel. Eliot’s drinking all the time now. Penny’s angrier than usual. Even Victoria and Josh, as little as Quentin knows them, seem snappish. No one’s eating. 

“Hey, Q,” Julia says, just after they run through the Rhinemann without actually casting for the tenth time in a row, “Smoke break.” 

He nods. They head out to the back of the cottage. On a whim, Q takes her hand and they step through the portal Eliot made that summer, which seems so long ago. Wherever it is, it’s warm here. They shuck off their coats, roll up their pant legs and dangle their feet in the pool. 

“Whatever happens tomorrow,” Quentin says, “I just —” 

“I know,” she says. She takes his hand. They’re silent for a moment. Cicadas call in the night breeze. 

“Eliot told me,” he starts, and his voice cracks. “Eliot told me we should, one more time. He said we’re all going to fucking die, and it won’t matter then.” 

She snorts. “I’m glad to know we have Eliot’s permission.” 

“He was at his breaking point. I don’t think he really meant it.” Quentin watches the lights play at the bottom of the pool, their shimmering fractures and cracks. 

“Q.” Julia looks at him. “Forget everything. Forget Eliot and Penny and the Rhinemann Ultra and the fucking Beast and the fact that yeah, we might fucking die tomorrow. What do you want?”

She’s waiting again. She needs him to be the one to cross the distance between them, to set aside his fear and doubt. He’s crying now, or at least there are tears coming down his cheeks. She wipes them off his face. And she waits. 

“You,” he chokes out. “You.” 

She stands up and takes his hand. They walk to one of those mammoth loungers, more bed than pool chair. Julia stands in front of him and carefully, solemnly, begins unbuttoning his shirt. Eliot’s shirt. He’s been wearing Eliot’s clothes for days. He makes his hands work, finally, starts on the buttons on her flannel. Underneath, he finds a black tank. She’s not wearing a bra. Julia pushes the button-down off his shoulders. 

“Please,” she says simply. She reaches up and touches his face. “Please, Q. Before all this goes to shit.” 

He can’t stop himself. He’s staring at her, at her nipples drawing up in the breeze, at her dark eyes, at the tangle of her hair. She’s stunning. He is enough for her. He reaches down and carefully unbuttons her jeans. She shimmies out of them, reaches out and does the same for him. He pulls her tank over her head. She shakes her hair out. They are, again, naked in front of each other, standing, staring, her breasts high and round, dark tight curls where her legs meet. His cock is stiff. 

“Jules,” he breathes, in the shimmering light that bounces off the water and onto their naked bodies. “You’re so fucking beautiful.” 

“Please, Q,” she says. 

He lays her down on the lounger, lies against her. She tangles into him, one thigh high between his. He can feel the soft heat radiating from her center. He’s hardening against her; he can hardly keep himself still on her. Her breasts press against his bare chest and this, this is what feels like home. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers into her ear. He kisses it, the curled curve of soft skin. “You can’t resist her,” he sings softly. He kisses it again. “She’s in your bones.” Another kiss. “She is your marrow and your ride home.” He sucks, so gently, down to her earlobe, and his hands tangle into her hair. “You can’t avoid her, she’s in the air, in between molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide.” He lets go of her for a moment and casts the poppers, mutters the spell. Rivers Cuomo takes over. 

Only in dreams  
You see what it means … 

And when he comes back to her, his lips are on her neck, kissing softly, sucking. He’s careful with her; he won’t leave a mark. His hand strokes her cheek and finally, finally turns it towards him. She sighs. She licks her bottom lip involuntarily, then both her lips are parting, tipped to his, and he meets them. For a moment, they rest against each other, not moving, before he tilts her chin in his hands and takes her lips between his. This kiss like this, like new lovers, before he opens his mouth and his tongue meets hers. This is what she wants. He doesn’t need a spell to know it. She wants him to make love to her on what might be the last night of their lives. 

They cup each other’s faces in their hands. Slowly, Julia begins to to move against him. Quentin’s hand skates down her neck. It rests there a moment. Weezer changes to acoustic Band of Horses. He cups her breast in his hand. She arches up in it. “That’s it,” he murmurs to her. His thumb grazes her nipple and she gasps a little against his lips. He can feel her against his thigh, warming on him, soft and starting to unfold. She brushes his hair out of the way, then lets her fingers tangle in it. He rubs her nipple again, a little more slowly, a little more deliberately. She sighs. He can’t stand it anymore; Jules feels so fucking good on him and he’s so hard, he rocks against her. Her thigh is so soft on his cock. He’s already dripping on her. This time, he takes her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and rolls it between them. She makes a soft keening sound in the back of her throat and presses closer. He moves his other hand, holds both her breasts and pinches gently, rubs at her nipples. 

Unwilling to wait anymore, Quentin nudges her onto her back, leans down, and sucks. Her nipple hardens even more in his mouth. He’s resting between her legs now, his cock against her. He feels the slightest bit of wetness on his shaft. He can’t help but rub against her as he switches breasts, sucks harder and deeper this time while he rolls the other wet nipple between his thumb and forefinger. 

“Q,” she half-whispers, half-purrs. “Oh god, Q, you feel so good.” 

He lies next to her again. “Let me feel you,” he says. His hand dances down to her belly, strokes gently. “Please, please let me touch you.” 

Her legs part for him. 

He finds her lips again — how did he never notice how lush they were? And his hand pets down, down. It tangles in the curls just above that perfect point, tangles and rubs gently. He smooths his hand over the inside curves of her thighs. He knows she’s wet now. His thumb skims closer to her, feels the soft skin between her legs. She’s already swollen for him. 

“Please, Jules,” he begs. 

“Shhh,” she whispers. She turns on her side, facing him. Her lips touch his again, one hand still curled through his hair, the other stroking down the faint trail of hair from his chest to his navel to the nest of curls between his legs. It rests there. She grips the absolute base of his cock with two fingers, rubs slightly up and down. It’s maddening. Her hands dips further, cups his balls. He groans. She pets them, weighs them in her palm. He makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat.

“Shhh,” she says again. 

His thumb strokes over her. He wants to open her up without touching her. But she’s already opening, already beginning to slick his fingers. He slides one just the slightest bit inside and plays at her entrance. She makes a deep, contented hum. 

“Do you like that?” he asks. 

“Mmm-hmm,” she says. She twists on his finger, squirms, begging. 

“Shhhhh,” he says right back. He begins spreading her slickness up towards her clit. She slides her hand onto his shaft, squeezes a bit. He’s desperate for it, arches and thrusts into her. Her thumb slides over his head, finds the pearled drops of precum there and spread them over him. Some of it ends up underneath his head, that sensitive spot she strokes gently and then harder, firmer. He has her clit wet now; he’s teasing it, petting it softly from top to bottom. She tilts her hips; she wants him to find that special spot where he can roll her clit underneath its hood. He wets his thumb in her, moves it upwards and presses there, rocks it back and forth. Her breath catches in a soft, throaty moan. 

“Let me,” he says. “Please?” 

She nods and slides to the edge of the lounger. He kneels on the concrete. Meeting her eyes, he lowers his head, purses his lips and sucks gently on her clit. She sighs, spreads her legs farther apart for him. He keeps sucking and rolls her clit under his tongue, then slides a finger into her. She gasps. He flicks his eyes up. She’s still staring at him, her eyes huge and dark in the shimmering light. Quentin hooks his finger onto her g-spot and finds a rhythm, sucks softly at her while he stares into her eyes. 

Then he stands up. 

“Yes,” Jules tells him. “Yes, Q.” 

She scoots backwards and casts quickly. He parts her legs with his own and kneels between them. “Yes,” she says again. He wants to wait. But he’s at her entrance and she’s so wet, so achingly ready for him. The head of his cock slips inside her, and Julia cries out, lifts her hips to meet him. Quentin thrusts, leans down, and he holds her, and holds her, and holds her, the two of them rocking against one another, until they’re crying out each other’s names, finally home, finally together again. 

***************

“Did you do it?” Eliot asks when Quentin eventually comes upstairs. 

“Did I do what?” Quentin asks. His voice is still thick and ragged. 

“You and Julia. Did you —”

He can’t lie to Eliot. “Yes,” he says. “But it had nothing to do with you, Eliot. I’m still in love with you. I can’t not be in love with you.” Quentin wraps his arms around him. He feels so good. Eliot rests his head on his shoulder. “Are you okay with it, El?”

“If it was Bambi, if I had one more chance —” 

“I know, El.”

“I can’t begrudge you something I would kill someone to have.” 

Quentin presses his lips to Eliot’s forehead. He tastes like salt, like a mixture of whiskey and sadness. “I’m so sorry, Eliot. I’m so sorry if it hurts you.” 

“I don’t fucking know,” he says. “I know I love you. I know I hurt. But I hurt in so many ways right now I don’t even know why.” 

Quentin holds him close. “Me too,” he whispers. 

“I’m scared, Q.” 

“Me too, El.” 

They lie down. They hold each other in the darkness. It’s all they can do now.


	23. Chapter 23

Julia and Quentin do the ritual to power up. It involves painting themselves with a lot of blood, spinning through some popper and chanting, mixing some of the blood with the lamia bits, then drinking the concoction. It’s fairly gruesome. But when they finish, Quentin feels taller somehow, his stride surer. Julia’s eyes flash darker. It worked. 

“We didn’t talk about one thing,” Victoria says. “What if this all goes to shit?” 

“Grab whoever you can and get the fuck out,” Julia tells her. 

Penny and Victoria nod. 

They walk through the clock, Julia and Quentin in the lead. They tumble out in front of the clock tree again. They stand up and hold hands. And then, suddenly, they’re in Castle Whitespire. In what must be the throne room: echoing marble, statues. Four thrones, all empty. 

“Oh, Quentin!” a voice calls. “I’ve been expecting you!” 

“Now,” Julia says. And the others throw up the Shu Shield around them. They start the complicated motions and chanting of the Rhinemann Ultra, moving together, then separately, like a river that flows around islands in a channel. 

“Oh, they’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,” sings the Beast. “Penny, Victoria! I know you’re here!” 

They’re readying the spells to hit him as soon as he enters the room. 

The Rhinemann is churning, churning in Quentin. He’s concentrating. He can’t think of anything else. He can feel Julia’s casting. It’s running fast, fast, fast. They’re doing it. They’re actually doing it. He can feel the power building. It’s intoxicating, like good liquor, like a drug. Julia’s feeling it. Julia’s loving it. 

“Tomorrow, you just wait and see,” sings the Beast. “Eliot! Do you miss your Bambi? She tasted as lovely as she looked.” 

And suddenly he’s there. The moths cloud his face, a sick, buzzing horde. His suit is immaculate. “Josh,” he says affectionately. “I missed you last time.” 

He slams their fireball out of the way. It bounces off the Shu Shield, and he volleys, as if at some sick game of tennis. Penny flickers behind him and casts the slicing spell. The Beast’s hands sheer off at the wrists in twins sprays of arterial blood. Penny flicks back behind the shield. 

“Luckily I no longer need my hands to cast!” the thing laughs. It slices Josh in half. He stays upright for a moment, then topples in two, blood spurting in sick pumps. 

The Rhinemann is spinning, spinning. It’s moving. The cogs are running, the spirals twisting, the magic looping the way it’s supposed to. Until Quentin feels something slip. He pours more energy into it, tries to veer it back into its proper channel. 

“Quentin, no!” Julia screams. He feels her pour herself into the spell. 

Eliot’s atomizing the ceiling above the Beast. It slows, roars. It whirls and slashes at Penny. He falls, bright blood spurting from his chest. 

The Rhinemann continues to wobble on its axis. Quentin drenches more and more of himself in it, more and more and more. He has to do this or they’re all going to die. 

“Q, pull back!” Julia’s yelling. “Pull up! Pull up!”

He feels her trying to make up the difference. Her fingertips are turning blue. 

“NO, JULIA!” Quentin shouts. He throws everything he has at the spell. Everything. “Get Eliot out!” he yells to whoever might be listening. 

“QUENTIN!” She’s yelling his name. But he can’t hear her anymore, because he’s suddenly burning, first the tips of his fingers, then his arms, and oh god, he’s on fire, and he’s screaming, and someone else is screaming and he doesn’t know who, doesn’t care because the pain is as incandescent as the blue flame consuming him, devouring him, changing him —

And then there is silence. And in the silence, there is Julia, aglow in blue fire. She smiles at him. He smiles back. They move to each other, take each others’ hands. They are beautiful. They are perfect. They are together, together, together, and they are something amazing, an incandescent blue flame of magic. Quentin touches her face. And they fly, everything forgotten but each other. 

Martin Chatwin screams. And his scream is terrible. When Victoria flashes back from Brakebills to grab Penny, he slaughters them both. 

Quentin and Julia are far away, together, drifting on the bare atoms of the universe. They do not think of the Beast. They do not think of Eliot, curled on the Cottage floor, screaming. They do not think of time loops, of travelers, of the Rhinemann Ultra. They think only the multiverse spread before them as a fever dream, a plaything, an endless fount of wonder, all theirs. Together.


End file.
